ERRATA. Modus Operandi — Letterpress & Risography Exhibition, Tenerife

At the end of March, Sala L at La Recova in Santa Cruz opened ERRATA. Modus Operandi — a collaborative exhibition by two printmaking collectives based in Tenerife.

Tipos en su Tinta was founded in 2013 by my friends, designers Matthias Beck and Lars Petter Amundsen. Reset Risografik is a risography workshop established in 2020 within the Design Faculty of the Universidad de La Laguna by graphic designer and educator Javier Cabrera.

The concept of the exhibition is built around error as a creative tool. Chance is not corrected here — it becomes the starting point. Risography and letterpress are material, tactile processes where the result is never fully predictable. That unpredictability is where the authors find their language.

On the gallery walls — series of alphabet sheets, each printed differently: different colours, misregistrations, layered impressions. Alongside them, creatures that seem born from errors: accidental images emerging where a typographic print meets a painterly gesture. These are not illustrations — they are side effects of the process that turned out more interesting than the intended result.

I particularly want to mention Lars Amundsen's works using my favourite tool — the Gelli plate. Lars has developed a unique technique: ink is applied to the silicone surface, a letterpress type block is pressed into it, and when the print is pulled, the ink transfers to the paper in a way that sits somewhere between printmaking and painting, between control and accident. I haven't seen anything like it before.

The exhibition runs until May 10, 2026 at Sala L, La Recova, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Highly recommended — if you're on the island, don't miss it.