This publication can be considered an omnibus of sorts, accompanying the exhibition of the same name by Boy Vereecken, Back Matter, the first of the international graphic designers invited to reinterpret their practice inside the IN-DESIGN section of the museum (3 February 2021 – 13 June 2021). The title of the exhibition refers to all of the parts which follow the central body of a publication, such as an epilogue, a colophon, a glossary, an appendix, and so forth. The term, defining the material and narrative body that can offer reflections to the subject matter of a book, is used metaphorically in this case, in relation to the content of the exhibition.

The choice of an omnibus as the editorial structure for this publication is based upon Maximilien Vox’s Bibliothèque Imaginaire, the driving force behind this prestigious French typographic yearbook that aimed to reunite disparate French printing houses after World War II. These issues largely contained vintage advertisements from printers, publishers and print-related services. A total of 74 different printers contributed material to these volumes, as did 17 different paper manufacturers. Hundreds of examples of lithography, collage, printed matter and all kinds of drawings and advertisements, from wine labels, to stationary, to bound menus, were brought together, unpaginated. Vox foresaw a restoration of equality between commercial printing, typesetting and the refined editions that characterized French book art before the war. 

The Back Matter exhibition space, which featured works by Stéphane Barbier Bouvet, Daniel Dewar & Gregory Gicquel, Jana Euler, Ezio Gribaudo, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Annette Kelm, Marlie Mul and Peter Wächtler, has been transformed to present pages of printed material the artist has been editing and designing as part of his body of work. These include pages from exhibition catalogues, excerpts of printed matter and covers of monographs, amongst other examples. The Back Matter catalogue, published by Spector Books, can be viewed both as an accompaniment and continuation of this work, in a bound publication form.