MezzocaneIlhas Studio

The book was designed for Enzo Cucchi’s exhibition at Culturgest that has brought together a wide-ranging selection of Cucchi’s work. After so many artist’s books and publications about his work, with an exhibition bringing together works from the last two decades, what book to design for Enzo Cucchi? Enzo Cucchi came up with the name Mezzocane: this myth that tells the story of a dog that was split in half so that an army could pass through the middle of the two parts. This image stayed with us and was transposed onto the text pages in the form of cracks that open up in the typeface, creating blank spaces. To this fundamental element was added the text by Bruno Marchand, which set the tone for the book: a narrative divided into three acts, each of which had to be treated in a different graphic and typographic way. Cucchi’s drawings were placed in negative and the book was lined in red, bringing that imagery of the book of hours or a missal that you can always carry in your pocket