POSTALCO is the name of a design studio originally opened by Mike and Yuri Abelson in Brooklyn, New York, in 2000. It is also the brand name of their various lineups of highly practical products, most notably bags and stationery items. For this exhibition coming just over a decade since the pair shifted their base to Tokyo, Mike created a new kind of printer. He calls it a “Wheel Printer,” and the inspiration that led him to its invention was Mike’s wondering about what would happen if ink was applied to the wheels of a car or bicycle. What tracks would they leave? And if they all came together at a street intersection, just imagine the complex patterns. And so Mike set to creating a printer made with wheels. Structurally, what he devised is a configuration of different wheels attached in rows. Each wheel is inked and when a notebook or sheet of paper passes through, the wheels leave colored ink patterns. So just what patterns does it produce? Stripes? Diagonal lines? Triangles? Or maybe it prints some unintentional plaid patterns?
POSTALCO’s newly invented Wheel Printer will be on display in the gallery, and Mike will be on hand to demonstrate how it actually works. The items created using the Wheel Printer, as well as POSTALCO’s other products, will also be on exhibit and available for purchase.
POSTALCO products are admired and widely sought out by people who appreciate how they came about and the way they revert to what is basic and familiar to us. We are confident that visitors will be attracted to POSTALCO’s creative style and philosophy.