Stefan Sagmeister exhibition reference to first reading

Maher Gharib - GD 300
The Happy Show - Stefan Sagmeister

The exhibition that we were told to attend was by Stefan Sagmeister, called, "The Happy Show".  It was my first time hearing about Stefan Sagmeister so I did not really know what to expect when coming in.  The first piece of exhibit that attracted my eyes  was not even in the exhibit itself but at the front of the entrance. Stefan creatively utilized the sign to engage the audience with forms and shapes such as arrows to inform the audience where to go as well as typography. Just looking at the sign, I could get a good reference of what to expect when coming in and I was not wrong. Once I walked in, I was immediately engaged to a long strip of wall with ripped pieces of paper that came together to form a sentence I believe or shapes. Because I was too close to the piece I could not grasp the art work from where I was standing.

The next art piece by Stefan that drew my eyes was a huge white air balloon that I could not get a really good perspective until I came in closer, but as I walked closer towards the door, I saw a bike in the middle of the floor with a giant light sign that read, " Actually Doing Things I Set Out To Do Increases My Overall Level Of Satisfaction". Reading this got me to thinking of the reading that we had to do and how it related to Stefan exhibit.  Stefan loves to use phrases or sentence with meaning to really engage the audience to think about what they just read and apply to their own life. Moving into the large room with the monkey balloons and with the hands sticking out holding candy, I realized Stefan loves to play with objects that people can see but also immerse in as well.  He also loves to play with typography and I would probably say he plays with typography more than anything, such as the photos he took of him using salt to create words or the light sign, the ripped paper, and even using his own hand writing to express his opinion of what it is to be happy and so on and so forth. 

The next piece and the last piece that I would talk about since there was lots of art pieces at the exhibit and I would not be able to get through all of them is the gumball dispenser machine that was numbered from 1 - 10. Stefan cleverly engaged the audience by asking them to take a gumball from your level of happiness, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.  Numbers from 8 - 10 were completely empty, as more people were more happy than sad.  From this piece alone and from the reading, I can see that Stefan was presenting a problem which is happiness. I could also get a understanding of the process that Stefan took for him to define happiness to himself by brainstorming, mind mapping, and visual research and probably many more thinking process went into him deciding as to what to present. The exhibit was fun and entertaining and unexpected at the same time. I did not think I could have fun at an art exhibit until now.