An editorial system for House of Chappaz

House of Chappaz, the Barcelona-based contemporary art gallery, commissioned Toormix to design the gallery’s new line of publications, embarking on the creation of the 2024–2025 season catalogue: a piece that needed to document the gallery’s programme, serve as an archive, raise the profile of its artists and connect with its target audience — all in a format befitting the gallery’s positioning and expanding the visual identity previously created by the studio.

The solution is not a conventional catalogue but an editorial system built throughout the year. Four individual booklets, one per exhibition, published sequentially during the season — numbered 1/4 to 4/4 with continuous pagination — and bound together by a living chromatic system that evolves from one publication to the next. The booklets can be read independently or as a single volume once gathered inside the box. Alongside them, a booklet of installation photographs, produced at the end of the year once all exhibitions have been documented, and a folded broadsheet featuring the gallery’s seasonal statement. All pieces come together in a bespoke box, delivered at year’s end as a limited, numbered edition of 200 copies — a true collector’s object.

The production is meticulous, complex and deeply intentional. Each exhibition booklet combines two types of paper: a bible paper for texts, printed in a single ink using the rivelino technique — also known as Split Fountain Printing — an artisanal process carried out at the offset press where two inks are placed at opposite ends of the same ink duct and, as printing progresses, gradually meet and merge into an unpredictable gradient, making every sheet unique and unrepeatable. Through careful page imposition and binding, no two facing pages will ever display the same ink. It is precisely here that the chromatic system finds its full meaning: the two main colours used in the rivelino of each booklet carry over into the next, with one colour reappearing and a new one introduced in its place. In the W.O.R.M exhibition, for example, a pink and a lilac are used; in the following publication, the lilac remains while the pink gives way to a Klein blue. The second element is a cover and archival interior section printed in four-colour with the publication’s primary colour. The installation photograph booklet is printed on coated calendered paper with a high-gloss mass varnish, while the box is printed on black card in a single ink — in this first 2024–2025 edition, a silver Pantone — creating contrast and allowing the images to read clearly in positive. Across the complete catalogue, the system draws on 5 papers, 9 inks and a range of printing techniques, producing editions that are entirely unique and unrepeatable.

Beyond the catalogue itself, the result is an editorial object that takes on a life of its own: a seasonal archive that documents, legitimises and projects the gallery and its artists. A piece that combines rigour and attitude in every detail, crafted to resonate with a kindred audience.