The Modest Master's Mesmerizing Screen Print Shop takes the work and activities of Kees Maas to show the variables and possiblilities of the technique of sikscreenprinting.
In recent years, the growing interest in "old-fashioned" techniques is clearly perceptible. Designers look for alternatives to the dominance of software and standard reproduction techniques (full color print). The Modest Master's Mesmerizing Screen Print Shop will highlight the unique qualities of screen printing: a relatively inexpensive and simple - and therefore very accessible and powerful - technique that therefore has an artistic but also activist character.
Forty years ago, in a city like Amsterdam, the workplaces (small offset and screen printing companies, binders, typesetting, shared studios, etc) were crawling, today there are - due to scaling up, environmental legislation, rise in rental costs and digitization - not much more of it. The Modest Master's Mesmerizing Screen Print Shop wants to pay attention to the workplace as a place for exchange and inspiration.
The departure of Kees Maas (both from the silkscreen workshop at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the relocation of his own workplace to Ruinen in Drenthe) is the reason to add The Modest Master's Mesmerizing Screen Print Shop to The Palace of Typographic Masonry. In the diverse activities of Maas the aforementioned issues congregate in a very convincing and inspiring way.
