Yvonne Quirmbach
Anonymous Design

October 26^th— December 15^th, 2018
Ground Floor Library

Greene Naftali is pleased to announce a special presentation by Berlin-based book designer Yvonne Quirmbach in our ground floor library. Comprising of an assortment of exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, ephemera, and artist books, Anonymous Design collects close to three hundred of her books, forming a near complete archive of her work.

Quirmbach has been designing books for contemporary artists and institutions since 1995, when as a student of communication design in Wuppertal, she produced her first catalogue for collaborative artists Walter Dahn and Philip Pocock. In Cologne in the 1990s and 2000s, Yvonne was met with the ideal conditions for an emerging designer—her proximity to the publisher and bookseller Walther König, the galleries Monika Sprüth and Daniel Buchholz, and the Museum Ludwig all contributed to her developing sensibility. Among this milieu she sparked early collaboration and friendship with artists such as Rosemarie Trockel, Matti Braun, Walter Dahn, Monika Baer, Cosima von Bonin, Manfred Pernice, and others, all of whom shaped her work and her methods of working.

Consistently implementing artistic concepts throughout her design, and always working in close collaboration with artists, Quirmbach places works of art at the center of her practice. In this regard, Quirmbach has escaped the repetitive markers of a distinctive style. A close friend characterized her approach as "anonymous design," owed to the ways in which it functions in the service of artists, rather than laminating their work with graphic strata. Her books carry the handwriting of the artists; only in the book’s imprint does one discover its designer.

Yvonne Quirmbach was born in 1973. She lives and works in Berlin and is the co-owner of Galerie BQ, Berlin.