The 6th Croatian Prints Triennial

Topic: Illusion in Art
Concepct: Željko Marciuš
/5 June–4 July 2012/

The Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts organizes the 6th Croatian Prints Triennial at the premises of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists, Trg žrtava fašizma bb, Zagreb and the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy, A. Hebranga 1, Zagreb.

This cultural event gathers 72 Croatian artists – printmakers, who were either invited to participate or chosen by the Election Committee to take part in the Triennial. The selector Željko Marciuš invited 11, while the Department of Prints and Drawings invited 41 authors to join the Triennial. Considering the specific nature of the topic, 29 artists responded to the invitation by the Department of Prints and Drawings, whilst out of 87 applicants, the Election Committee chose 32 authors who had fulfilled the high demands set by the institution.

The argumentation of the topic:

This year's topic at the Prints Triennial is Illusion in Art; it represents one of the basic optical, visual-scientific issues and fundaments of the Western European art. The term refers not only to the visual heritage and the cultural heritage of mankind, but also to the contemporary art and the futuristic projections, which in the futuristic, brave virtual world question the boundaries of human perception, reality and the realistic, the empiric, and the existential. Hence, the focal point of interest of the 6th Croatian Prints Triennial sets and questions the topic of illusion in art as one of the fundaments for human visualisation of the world, removing in that fashion the old, extended and interdependent traditional boundaries, dividing low culture from high culture. The topic includes 3D-heritage from the repository of art and new invention spaces of three-dimensional illusionist prints. Illusion in art opens a broad area of visualisations realised – on equal footing – in all printmaking techniques and extended media, tending towards spatial and environmental printing art realised by illusionist means. Ranging from three-dimensional cultural heritage to virtual, computer art of printmaking, the topic offers equal opportunities to the tradition of the illusionist presentation of the idea of the world and to the most recent artistic-scientific research in the fields of perception and total visualisation making use of the latest technology. It ranges from utopia to dystopia; from traditional illusionist figuration to virtual spatiality, 3D-abstraction and optical ambiguity; from Neo-Mannerist shifted and miraculous spaces to the popular image in low culture: illustrative and comic-strip, SF- and fantasy world. Illusion in art opens a broad set of expressions, extending the opportunities for visualisation: from traditional sources to futuristic virtualisations enabled by our to a very high extent visual culture, rich in information and interactive.

The choice of authors for the 6th Croatian Prints Triennial offers a sample that proves and defends in a most evident manner the importance of illusion in art as one of the fundaments for a comprehensive presentation of the world by the means of visual art. They are all — static and moveable, analogue and virtual pictures — linked by the principle of presenting the basic through knowledge. We see what is known to us, and an artist knows how to present and show it;… by formulas, experience, stereotypes and aberrations from them, perspectives causing a three-dimensional effect on a two-dimensional base including a wide range of topics, which – by demystifying or illusionism and covering-up the true meaning – contribute to the creation of the magic effect of natural magic in front of the tired and burnout eye of the 21st century.

(From the text by Željko Marciuš)