PICTOPIA EXHIBITION. PART I.

Animisations, creations & iconisations.

Text: Vitalija Stepušaitytė.

PICTOPIA this year got really more official, scientific and impressive.

Despite the Character Walk which was spread in Mitte, and parties, the main action took place in a respected art institution “Haus der Kulturen der Welt”. A big event in a huge building where everyone found the right place and time to be, either it was presentations, symposium panels, playground, workshops or exhibition hall.

I would like to invite you to have a look at the biggest exhibition which was set up for PICTOPIA under the roof of “Haus der Kulturen der Welt”.

I would call it rather a retrospective view for significant artists, illustrators, designers' art pieces which they done in recent years. That does not mean that it is less interesting, I would say opposite, bringing so many different artists under one umbrella shows the wide range of expressions, visual talking, provoking etc.. And that is all about Characters!

Dalek

The organizers excluded four main ways of characters' presentations.

They are : „Remix and Animism“, „The Paradox of Corporeality“, „Get into Character“ and „Installations“.

Let's start from the beginning - REMIX and ANIMISM.

Remixes of techniques and aesthetics – that's what we usually find in contemporary culture. Everything seems for us accidental although usually artists have chosen particularly parts to mix, exact ideas, aesthetics, problems and reduced or photo-realistic human/animal/fantastic bodies to express feelings. Everything has its own story. Artists see their own world which they present for us.

Like Aaron Steward, he sees crazy characters in old photos. These colorful creatures may be the secret imagination world of people who are in pictures or maybe of the viewer, who sees more. You never know, that's a nice game, isn't it? The other great example is Ian Stevenson, who draws those primitive creatures, which actually are us, people, and straight, black on white, shouts truth.

Aaron Steward

Ian Stevenson

Different style – pop-surrealism. Mark Ryden tells us crutial stories of our society through innocent looking animals. This animism plays with our perceptions.

The other artist Ben Frost who is famous for his kaleidoscopic Pop art, where he puts photo-realism, collages, graffiti, mainstream icons such as Mickey Mouse, Bembi, he also adds words from politics background and in this creates many surfaced conceptual art piece.

I can not not to mention James Marshall aka Dalek and his iconic character Space Monkey which he uses already for ten years. Although we are still not bored! And Mr. Dalek tells us different stories about Space Monkey. Recently he has changed his style a little bit, he has become more abstract but we still can recognize Space Monkey.

Hideaki Kawashima is presenting contemporary Japanese art scene. Soulful, feminine and deep.

Gary Basement art pieces show his surreal perception of the world full of characters, meanings and sexualities. Autobiographical but at the same time leaves door open for entering that weird and crazy Gary Basements' world.

Mark Ryden

Ben Frost

Hideaki Kawashima

Gary Basement

Boris Hoppek created his character Bimbo in streets while he was doing graffiti. Now he manages to manipulate serious teams such as immigration, racism, violence, sexuality with this one character!

Also Tim Biskup with his main character Helper for many years explored different stories, fantasies. Although recently he has turned to more conceptual expression but still the main object is his character Helper.

And for finishing this part – Jeremy Dower, who creates embryonic creatures waiting for us and our interpretations.

These are the artists who represent contemporary art world using remixes of visual codes and animism. They use iconic symbols which straight away show what they wanna say and is so difficult to write about indeed. Characters who light up us, who frightens, makes us laugh, make us sad or make anxious.

Boris Hoppek

Boris Hoppek

Tim Biskup

Jeremy Dower

Photos from Exhibition.

Pictoplasma.

To be continued:)