The Pictopia exhibition playfully explored the phenomenon of contemporary character design and art. Graphic designers, artists, animators, media and 3D designers work with a shared set of signs, opening up new contexts and correlations. The exhibition examines the contemporary vague of reduced figuration as a strategy for producing a vitalism outside established narratives. These so-called characters are reduced to the anthropomorphic function of eye contact which seems to look out from flat pictorial space at the viewer.

The title “Pictopia” is a reference to the promise and desire that these characters exude, without ever being able to deliver.
Including original artwork by: Aaron Stewart, AJ Fosik, Akinori Oishi, Ben Frost, Borris Hoppek , Daniel & Geo Fuchs, Doma Collective, Doudouboy, Dylan Martorell, Edwina Ashton, Faiyaz Jafri, Fons Schiedon, Friends With You, Gary Baseman, Golan Levin, Hideaki Kawashima, Ian Stevenson, James Marshall, Jeremy Dower, Juan Pablo Cambariere, Mark Ryden, Motomichi Nakamura, Nagi Noda, Olaf Breuning, Rinzen, Sam Gibbons, Shoboshobo, Tim Biskup, Waynehorse
and many more…

The accompanying 328 page catalogue assembles texts and works by international artists, designers and theorists, all investigating the aesthetic principle of reduction and abstraction in the design of anthropomorphic characters.
Apart from high quality reproductions of all of the exhibitions original artwork, the publication offers essays by Paul McCarthy (artist, Los Angeles), Kristof Nyiri (philosopher, Budapest University of Technology and Economics), Lev Manovich (media therory, University of California), Brian Duffy (robotics, Paris), and more…PICTOPLASMA

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