Issy Wood – Study For No at Lafayette Anticipations

Study For No is the title of Issy Wood’s first solo exhibition in France. The show by the up-and-coming painter from London is on display at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris until January 7, 2024:

Borrowing its title from a 2019 painting, it explores the potential of refusal, discussing and resisting orders which secretly weave their way into our daily lives. Building through seduction, humor and cynicism, her work is marked by the recurrence of serialized motifs: hypersexualized glossy leather jackets, gleaming car interiors, immaculate porcelain sets, representations of animals, female figures, and self-portraits —all counting as sites where our ways of being are played out.

Curator Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel commissioned Pierre Vanni with the visual identity of the exhibition. Among the items designed by Vanni are the exhibition poster, subway ads, and a bilingual booklet. The selected artwork is an unnerving one, certainly for those of us who are dreading our next dentist’s appointment. It’s titled Study for Wednesday (oil on linen, 2022; © Issy Wood, courtesy the artist; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and Michael Werner, New York. Photographer: Stephen James).

There are two title typefaces used throughout the applications: Kessler is Alaric Garnier’s contemporary take on inscriptional serifs, released with Production Type. Englische Schreibschrift is a classic Anglaise with not-quite-joining letters. It was made in-house at Berthold in the 1970s, under the supervision of Günter Gerhard Lange. All text is shown in silver, echoing the shiny metal of the dental drill.