What Else is New?
Forty years of devious poster collecting at the Rietveld Academie by Henk GroenendijkAs a student at the graphic design department you already know to produce a couple of extra copies of your work for friends, your archive and Henk Groenendijk. Always staying a little bit longer after an assessment talk has finished, he already had his eye on a publication or poster of his liking that a student made, and will either buy it, ask to get it for free, or pay for an extra copy to be made if someone didnt yet know the drill.
Henk has always been a collector. His father collected Cobra and as a kid, Henk joined him to buy artists books at the legendary shop Other Books and So from Ulises Carrin. Henks father was a dentist and artists would pay for a yearly check-up with a publication they had made, a root canal treatment might have cost them a small painting. Henk joined the Rietveld Academie when the archive room was used by a concierge to distill his own liquor and collecting the academys history was one of the tasks that came along with teaching.
What Else is New? consists of posters that appeared on the walls of the school and were collected by Henks devious methods. The poster collection now forms a subjective reading of forty years of exhibitions and events organised by or with Rietveld students and alumni, in and outside of the academys premises.
In the framework of this exhibition, designer Olivier Lebrun gave a lecture on May 11 about his research on the amazing posters that the French designer Bernard Chadebec designed during his forty year long career at the Institut National de Recherche et de Securite, translated as National Institute for Research and Security for the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases.