Sungazing by Team Thursday (NL)

The private and public spaces of Via Zuretti merge into the Sungazing exhibition hosted by Parco Gallery. The project curated by Loredana Bontempi and Emanuele Bonetti of Parco Studio, is a graphic work by Team Thursday, a Dutch graphic design studio founded by Loes van Esch and Simone Turn. Their work is characterized by an unprecedented and curious gaze, aimed to capture unusual and surprising elements of urban furniture and, more generally, of the contexts in which the designers work firsthand.

In 2019, at the “Ink Village” exhibition curated by Corners Studio, an event hosted at the Archive Bomm gallery in Seoul, the duo had presented a project where patterns resulting from the interlocking bricks of the city’s buildings became modules for the creation of a new typeface. A similar process of observation has been used in the site-specific work created for Parco Gallery, as the Team Thursday designers became fascinated by the sun shades displayed on balconies in Milan that often seem to want to escape the interiors of houses to lie over the railings. An element that is concealed and not very evident, but able to create an important connection between spaces.

The installation is inspired by this structural element and exploits three different levels of the exhibition space to create a new panorama that build the dialogue between the inner and outer environment, by generating an immersive experience that encourages exploration. Team Thursday invites visitors to lose themselves with their gaze within what is apparently just a graphic pattern, going in search of hidden forms, typographic signs and poetic messages.

An invitation to dwell on the many blind spots that a careless gaze is likely to miss, in order to enjoy the smallest details by elevating them to a new value, including a formal one.

Team Thursday is Loes van Esch and Simone Trum, collaborating as a graphic design studio based in Rotterdam. They focus on the design of visual identities, books and spatial objects. They do so with a special interest for typography, a curiousness for materials and the possible performativity of an object. Looking for patterns in everything and all around them, they search for how they can transform these into designs. Next to that they regularly teach Typography at ArtEZ in Arnhem and irregularly host exhibitions and events in the front part of their studio space, TTHQ. Since 2022, Loes van Esch and Simone Trum have been AGI – Alliance Graphique Internationale members.