Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
118 South 36th St., Philadelphia, PA
Through August 12
While Stefan Sagmeister is known as a graphic designer, his work often subverts the boundary between design and art. For his first museum exhibition in the United States, Sagmeister will present a vision of his journey to find happiness, taking over the second-floor galleries and Ramp in addition to interstices throughout the museum. The narrative of the exhibition is structured using personal maxims as expressed through typographic investigations. Alongside these maxims appears social data from psychologists, anthropologists, and historians, contextualizing Sagmeister’s experience within the larger factors of age, gender, race, and economics. “I am usually rather bored with definitions,” Sagmeister explains. “Happiness, however, is just such a big subject that it might be worth a try to pin it down.”