April 16th marks the official beginning of the second year of our exhibition platform. This year’s theme is layers. Something we encounter, work with, and are shaped by every day.

The first layer of this year’s exhibition series is formed by the interactive installation [interim] by Ema Kern, which approaches typography not as a fixed system, but as something that is constantly in process. It shifts, accumulates, and is never fully complete.

The exhibition [interim] is based on the concept of a moment between states, when form is still stabilizing or already beginning to dissolve. Typography is not understood here as a finished result, but as a series of decisions temporarily fixed into a specific shape or state. Each character is just one of many possible versions that could have emerged in entirely different ways.

This is reflected in Ema’s approach to the visual layer of the installation. She begins with static forms created through the layering of gesture and its translation into a grid system. This structure is then disrupted, shifted, and deconstructed, transforming an originally stable form into an open, variable structure that continues to evolve indefinitely, even in the digital space.

Conceptually, the exhibition is built around hybrid or “mutant” characters æ (ash), ‽ (interrobang) and þ (thorn), which exist in-between. They are forms in which multiple states coexist at once. The title [interim] refers precisely to this in-between condition. A moment in which form is not yet final, yet already carries the traces of the decisions shaping it.

Ema Kern is a graphic and type designer based in Bratislava. Her personal work currently focuses on experimental and modular typography, exploring open visual systems and their transformations over time. She is currently exploring these themes in her diploma thesis at the Typolab studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. However, Ema also works on non-experimental type design, publication design and visual identities.

This project was supported by Staromestské kultúrne centrá, BITTNER print, Typocon.

Exhibiting artist:
Ema Kern
@emaluuuvka

Event photos:
Peter Pozník, Nikki Stanke, Ester Šmídová