Tomorrow evening, join Gabriel Stromberg, art director and
graphic designer at Seattle-based creative agency Civilization, for his first
show in seven years. Stromberg, who formerly worked at No Space Gallery,
Totokaelo, and the Henry Art Gallery before helping launch Civilization, is
mounting a series of screen prints at Capitol Hill’s Cairo gallery. The show,
entitled INTERIORS, will run through July 7. The pieces feature geometric
shapes and patterns, some of them Roy Lichtenstein-esque—a reflection of Stromberg’s
current inspirations.
“I look at a lot of books and I’m always on Google image
search trying to find interesting, weird things to spark the ideas,” Stromberg
says. “I look a lot at retro graphic design from the 60s, 70s, and early 80s—I
love that stuff—and lately I’ve been really into that modernist minimal
geometric aesthetic.”
Stromberg says he fell into graphic design while designing
fliers, posters, and artist books at No Space, and despite keeping busy with
client work, he is always sketching in his notebook. Like many designers, he
says that his personal work and client work do influence each other.
“I think design work, by its very nature, has to be really
resolved and complete because you’re usually trying to solve a problem or
communicate something really specific,” Stromberg notes, “whereas art can
really be more open-ended. I think that taking time to be more creative, and to
experiment and play, helps things take form. And it often goes into the design
work, which then ends up being more dynamic and interesting.”
The opening reception for INTERIORS is Thursday, June 9, from 7 to 9pm at Cairo.
