2022
60 copies
Signed and numbered
41×31 cm
16.1×12.2 in.
590g/m2 Lustro paper
12 Die cut stencils
Printed colophon
Metal binding rings

1.060 €



Rirkrit Tiravanija is an artist of many skills: he cooks, paints, sculpts, makes movies, builds houses, curates, teaches. He is also an artist of words. So many words that he needed his very own “corporate” font, the TIRAVANIJA ONE*, designed in 2007 by Chris Rehberger from Berlin’s design studio “Double Standards”. The font has since been used on all of Tiravanija works that involve text, such as paintings, prints, ping pong tables and even marble sculptures…

For Three Star Books, Tiravanija had the idea to make a book of stencil, the slogans die-cut on a hefty orange “Lustro” card, a specialty paper produced in France. In Thai culture the color orange or saffron represents simplicity and detachment from materiality, the perfect choice for this book of spiritual aphorisms.
In the style of a Bauhaus research book with its plain and functional design, ONCE UPON A TIME is composed of six slogans in English, followed by their French translations, arranged by the artist so as to create a “poem” to be read from page one to twelve. 

The slogans composing this volume were selected from a series of works exhibited at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, in 2018. Most of the individual phrases —though sometimes misquoted as Rirkrit Tiravanija is happy to admit— can be easily tracked back to John Giorno’s poems, video games, high literature, TV shows or the artist’s everyday‘s wandering and procrastination…
Thanks to the binding rings, the die cut individual stencils are usable and can be sprayed to easily diffuse Tiravanija’s « activist » poetry.

*”When  Rirkrit  Tiravanija  asked  us  in  2007 to  design  a  typeface  based  on  a  stencil  he brought  back  from  Venice  it  didn’t  take  us  too long  to  agree  on  it,  since  we  were  supposed to  design  his  poster  for  the  Guggenheim show THEANYSPACEWHATEVER,  and his documentary  CHEW  THE  FAT  that  was part  of it.  What  took  us  by  surprise  and  a  little while  longer  than  we  thought  at  first  was the optimization  process,  since  our  goal  was to  keep  the  font’s stencil-like  appearance and  at  the  same  time  to  even  out  the  more  or less  too  obviously  wrong  bits  of  it.  As  there were  minimal  corrections  necessary  in  stroke and  letter  widths,  curves  and  corners.  The typeface  TIRAVANIJA  ONE  was  then  used by  us  to  design  the  poster  and  film  titles  of CHEW THE FAT and is since  then  an  inherent part  of  Rirkrit’s  repertoire  in  paintings  and prints.”
Chris Rehberger
(from the text that accompanied the presentation of the TIRAVANIJA ONE type specimen at BOOK MACHINE, Centre Pompidou, curated by Christophe Boutin and Mélanie Scarciglia - 20 February - 11 March 2013 @ Le Nouveau festival du Centre Pompidou)

© 2024 Three Star Books, All Rights Reserved