22/11/2011
FRAIS PEINT is exhibiting Art School’s first years

Starting on the week of November 20th.
Green Gallery, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
A collaboration between Andrew Lister, Jaewon Seok
and Xavier Mayhem.

The signage scheme applied to this all-school exhibition deprives the gallery of functioning in the English language. The show's visual identity was inspired by an official “fresh paint” card found in a Montreal subway station. In french, Frais Peint sounds like a twisted anglicism. The commonly used expression would be Peinture Fraîche. To apply this different language also means to disturb the current state of operations of the gallery. Unionized workers painted the main wall in red only using Benjamin Moore color named “red”. To the same extent, the graphic language of commercial painters was used to broaden their estate into the territory of the gallery. Artists were invited to courageously hang their work on the wall. “Who is afraid of the red wall?” asked Sam Messer, Associate Dean, in all-school communications. The flyers were made of paperboard painted in the same color.