Designing Through the Wall: Cyan in the 1990s

June 20–October 6, 2019
Cool blue, pink, gray, and green posters with transparent photo overlays streamlining the white walls.

Born in East Berlin, Detlaf Fiedler and Daniela Haufe started the commercial graphic design agency Cyan soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They would go on to become some of the first poster artists to utilize early desktop publishing tools like Photoshop and QuarkXPress into their work, while also looking back and drawing from the intellectual history of the famous Bauhaus art academy.

Cyan expands upon Germany’s rich history as a leader in the printmaking world, their posters bursting with saturated colors, perfectly-executed text, and a precision of alignment few could replicate. They turn the tenets of “good design” on their head, proving that advertising does not necessarily need to be immediately interpretable to be successful. This Jewel Box show presents their early posters for the first time in New York City.

Curator
Angelina Lippert
Exhibition Design
Ola Baldych
Located
Poster House, Jewel Box Gallery
Visitor Information
Allot approximately 15 min
Parental Guidance
This exhibition is rated G
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Press

“Set to become the obvious reason to celebrate 2019 as the year of the poster, Poster House is ready to inspire and educate us all.”
— TYPEROOM, AUGUST 28, 2019
“…Poster House joins the roster of must-visit art destinations in NYC.”
— COOL HUNTING, JULY 9, 2019
“Mucha made a hundred and nineteen posters during his career, and the Poster House exhibition collects all but three of them.”
— THE NEW YORKER, JULY 1, 2019
“A new museum in New York celebrates the ubiquitous poster—a medium used for everything from wartime propaganda to avant-garde ads.”
— VANITY FAIR, JUNE 25, 2019
“Fans of graphic design have reason to rejoice.”
— QUARTZ, JUNE 20, 2019
“Poster House aims to satisfy the longstanding desire of collectors and fans for an American-based poster museum.”
— NBC NEW YORK, JUNE 20, 2019
“The museum so far has a collection of around 7,000 international posters, from the medium’s beginnings in the 1870s to recent campaigns.”
— THE ART NEWSPAPER, JUNE 20, 2019
“The museum…is taking a scrappy and focused approach to a genre that really took off as a medium in the late 1860s and has become so omnipresent that some may forget that it can be art.”
— THE NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 20, 2019
“The inaugural exhibitions at the Poster House show just how far the art form has come.”
— ART & OBJECT, JUNE 19, 2019
“Designing Through the Wall is Cyan’s first show in the United States, and little had been written on the collective prior to the exhibition.”
— AIGA, JUNE 19, 2019
“There will now be a museum in New York City that is going to give you extreme poster envy.”
— CHELSEA COMMUNITY NEWS, JUNE 18, 2019
“The museum’s agenda will be global and diverse…”
— HYPERALLERGIC, JUNE 5, 2019
“Poster House will open on June 20, with an identity created by Paula Scher and her team at Pentagram New York.”
— CREATIVE REVIEW, JUNE 4, 2019
“…the history of the medium is explored in unprecedented depth with examples from all over the world and throughout history.”
— THE GUARDIAN, MAY 28, 2019
“Poster House takes its mission from the medium, aiming to entertain and educate all audiences.”
— ARTDAILY, MAY 19, 2019

Selected Images

A poster of a black floor plan with outlines of air crafts overlaying an orange and white nude figure.
A poster of a monochrome person with overlays of a white transparent open mouth diagram and dog.
A poster of a blue person with overlays of blue and orange transparent Bauhaus building with texts.
A pink and black poster of text with overlays of a figure with their arms raised to their head.
A poster of white text overlaying a red transparent grid pattern and a purple person in profile.
A poster of orange and blue overlays of a Bauhaus staircase and the overlay of a face.
A yellow and black poster of 2 figures walking to the left with overlays of white vertical text.
A poster of a sleeping face with a chart and an orange transparent Bauhaus building overlaying it.