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Hervé Tullet: Shape and Color at Albright-Knox Northland

Play, Create, Participate (May 15–August 16, 2020)

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Buffalo, NY – Today the Albright-Knox Art Gallery announced that Hervé Tullet will be the next featured artist at Albright-Knox Northland. The new exhibition, titled Hervé Tullet: Shape and Color, will open Friday, May 15, and will be on view until Sunday, August 16, 2020.

Tullet is an artist, performer, and beloved children’s book author for whom artmaking is fundamentally a collaboration in which viewers become participants. Each artwork in Shape and Color, the artist’s largest installation to date, will represent the contributions of many hands through a series of workshops. These co-creators will be invited to contribute their own versions of Tullet’s signature primary-colored lines and shapes to the paper from which the artist will craft the body of the installation.

As the lines between artist and viewer, exhibition and production are blurred, so too are those between museum and studio, transforming Albright-Knox Northland into an interactive experience. Tullet encourages visitors of all ages and all artmaking abilities to add their own playful creations to the ever-expanding exhibition.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a host of educational programs and events, which will be added to the museum’s website in the coming weeks. For all dates, times, and programming details please visit www.albrightknox.org/hervetullet.

About the Artist

Hervé Tullet is an artist, performer, and author of children’s books born in Normandy, France, in 1958. After studying illustration and visual communication, he worked for about ten years in advertising.

In 1994, his first children’s book, Comment papa a rencontré maman, was published by Le Seuil Jeunesse. In 1998, Tullet received the Non-Fiction Prize at the Bologna International Book Fair for Faut pas confondre. His books, which favor following a path as opposed to a narrative, quickly made a name for themselves. His books, which can be touched as much as they can be read, connect to children from early childhood onward. His illustrations, which often approach abstraction, and his unique narrative style invite readers to become part of the book.

Press Here, published in 2010, synthesizes his art in its purest form, creating magic with just three dots: yellow, red and blue. A critical and popular success, Press Here has been translated into more than thirty languages. Tullet’s follow-up books include Mix it Up!, Let’s Play!, and Say Zoop!

Based in the United States since 2015, Tullet has led numerous workshops in prestigious venues, such as the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He has also mounted exhibitions of his own work at the Invisible Dog Art Center in New York (This Isn’t Trash, 2017) and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh (Art Explosion, 2017).

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