For each project, Harmen Liemburg (1966) immerses himself in the visual aspects of a certain topic, including clichés or apparent trivia. He sees beauty in everyday traffic signs, logos, packaging design and other ephemeral material that most people take for granted or maybe don’t even notice at all. The visual building blocks that he’s collecting are mostly redrawn and adjusted for printing. By combining them with others, the separate elements take on a new role and meaning. Liemburg trusts that his research and working process will take him to an interesting place, leaving space for imagination, emotion and intuition.
Liemburg originally trained as a cartographer. In search of a way to increase his opportunities for expression in the graphic field, he eventually enrolled at Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He became part of a new generation of designers, one closely connected to the world of visual arts, museums and education. In many ways, Liemburg is an artist in the traditional sense. Obsessed with screen printing, he uses the medium to create a variety of unexpected results.