Since the artist collective’s inception in 2000, Instant Coffee has used language like colour, incorporating slogans like “it doesn’t have to be good to be meaningful and “get social or get lost” into their architectural installations, which often involve a redesign or reconfiguration of domestic social spaces (a sunken living room, a bedroom or kitchen). It is through succinct catchphrases, which at times drip with the sincerity of self-help jargon, ring with the urgings of advertising slogans or resound with a dissonant irony, that Instant Coffee gradually build a lexicon that lays the ground for its particular way of making art — one that emphasizes the relationship between form and social interactions.

As part of Instant Coffee‘s self-proclaimed “Year of Bright Days,” they will exhibit “Say Nothing in Bright Colours,” a series of language-based prints and objects that have been pared to the sign.

Instant Coffee is an internationally recognized artist collective based in Toronto and Vancouver. Most recently Instant Coffee has exhibited as part MDE07 encuentro internacional curated by Jose Roca, Casa del Encuentro, Medellin, Colombia; Instant Coffee Nooks + Everyone, Mercer Union Gallery, Toronto; If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now, Henry Satellite, Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle; and Instant Coffee Romance Posters, Art Metropole, Toronto. In 2008 Instant Coffee participated in What We Bring to the Table, curated by Marnie Fleming, Oakville Galleries, On; Instant Coffee: Light Bar, Flaggfabrikken, Bergen, Norway; and Kuenstlerhaueser Worpswede, Germany. Upcoming projects include Main Street Translink Public Art Commission, Vancouver; Light Bar for the group exhibition Assume Nothing: New Social Practice, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Disco Bomb Shelter for The Toronto Sculpture Garden. Texts on their work have been published in Canadian Art, Toronto; The New York Times; Journal for Northeast Issues, Hamburg; The Seattle Stranger and C Magazine, Toronto. Instant Coffee’s most consistent members are Cecilia Berkovic, Jinhan Ko, Khan Lee, Kelly Lycan, Kate Monro and Jenifer Papararo.

Instant Coffee: it doesn’t have to be good to be meaningful. www.instantcoffee.org