Pictoplasma Berlin

The jubilee of one of the most progressive festivals of avant-garde art and graphic design receives special attention, and many main and satellite events will be enriching this year’s event. Over the past ten years, Pictoplasma Berlin has grown into a renowned platform for support and promotion of pioneering art of the digital era. A special exhibition was organized celebrating the anniversary presenting Pictoplasma Portrait Gallery at Kaufhaus Jandorf, presenting new pieces by more than 100 artists who made significant impact on the Festival over the years.

Program

The programme includes the Character Walk, touring through many exhibitions displaying emerging and acclaimed creatives, a lot of whom are showing in Germany for the first time. Pictoplasma organized the Pictoplasma Academy in October 2013, and the “graduates” will present their artwork at Urban Spree section. The Babylon will showcase novel animations nightly, until the fourth evening when a Big Birthday Party of Pictoplasma Festival will go down at Urban Spree. Berliners and visitors are really in for a fantastic, inspirational and fun week, with main events opening and happening between April 30 and May 4, 2014 at Kaufhaus Jandorf, Babylon, Urban Spree and 15 other spaces around Berlin.

The Pictoplasma Portrait Gallery

The central event of Pictoplasma Festival at Kaufhaus Jandorf will surely be The Pictoplasma Portrait Gallery, a comprehensive exhibition of new artwork created by over 100 international artists, illustrators, designers and filmmakers who made their mark participating in the project over the decade. The opening reception is scheduled for April 30, with a duration of the show slightly extended to May 11, 2014.

The focus of the exhibition will be investigation of genesis of figurative art in the postdigital period today. The show will include general Pictoplasma concepts by exploring face creation and animism, raising questions of the nature of facial representation and its emotional potential.

This is the reason why portrait has been given as the expressive topic, since the genre has been the best way of describing a person’s character and spirit since the classical age. Portrait has proved to be one of the most transformed genres, subject to interpretations in any and every medium, from oil painting to photography and digital art. Pictoplasma exhibition will showcase paintings, sculptural works, animated portraits, addressing the today’s selfie mania in a section curated through an open call for #CharacterSelfies.

After Berlin, Pictoplasma Portrait Gallery will be travelling to Mexico, where the show will be exhibited at the Museum for Contemporary Art MARCO in Monterrey.

Pictoplasma Walk and Conference

Character Walk portion of the Pictoplasma programme will include exhibitions in additional 15 spaces around Berlin. Presenting foremost creatives in the world of digital and urban art, including Buff Monster [who will be showing at the Portrait Gallery as well] and Nychos, along with an international lineup of creatives presenting their illustrative and innovative art.

Buff Monster and Nychos will be speaking along with a number of prominent artists at this year’s Pictoplasma Conference. It will surely be exceptionally interesting to hear them, but unfortunately the tickets for the conference have all been sold out.