Proposal Abstract

Contemporary printmakers often reach borders of their own discipline, as they were testing its flexibility, limitations and endurance. They create unexpected combinations, create fusions of artistic means relevant to printmaking and other mediums. They find themselves difficult to classify within the traditional academic division for the classical printing methods. They refer to the fundamentals of printmaking: unique matrix, multiplied images, layered structure. At the same time, they break its basic rules, keep searching for new formal, conceptual and technical solutions. They blend tradition and innovation, analogue and digital art. They are printmakers who flirt with sculpture, ceramics, performance, video etc. 

Aware of their own uniqueness or unconsciously resistant to follow the traditional rules, they keep searching for their proper place in the printmaking world. Anxious, rebellious, atypical, sometimes difficult to understand. Cutting off the (border) lines they create, their own universes are full of new structures and meanings. The proposed exhibition is intended as a review of graphic borderline personalities—creative attitudes escaping conventional definitions. The representation of artists chosen by the curators are connected with the graphic medium on various levels but in their artwork they go beyond the scheme. To quote Prof. Andrzej Węcławski, ‘Printmaking is not an end in itself here—it has been liberated from the celebration of the medium and admiration of graphicality’.

The representation of artists includes 12 names from Poland and abroad with an established position in the graphic world or art in general – Paul Catanese (USA), Mateusz Dąbrowski (PL), Paul Laidler (UK), Kamil Kocurek (PL), Michelle Murillo (USA), Marta Pogorzelec (PL), Priscilla Romero-Cubero (CRI), Eric Souther (USA), Magdalena Stawarska-Beavan (UK), Patricia Villalobos-Echeveria (NIC), Małgorzata Et Ber Warlikowska (PL), Michalina Wawrzyczek-Klasik (PL).