Graphica Creativa 2019 Hereafter

The fifteenth international Graphica Creativa triennale fills the Jyväskylä Art Museum with works by young artists.

Graphica Creativa 2019 – Hereafter features works by artists from invited art universities in four major cities: Helsinki, Oslo, Tokyo and Alberta. The focus is on printmaking students who present projects on themes important to them, accompanied by works by professors and teachers of printmaking.

Contemporary graphic art is highly topical and engages in current social debates. Within an interdisciplinary project investigating the interfaces between the body and technology, Canadian students examine how contemporary society is reframing the body through advanced medicine and technologies. Printmaking students from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts examine the state of the world as their theme. Uncertainty and instability, climate change and resources are among the pressing issues explored in their works. In spite of cultural differences, we all share the same concern about the future of the planet.

Among the topics explored by young artists in the Hereafter exhibition are also printmaking as an art; the issues of publication; and the position of print in the field of contemporary art. Japanese students investigate the profusion of images in contemporary society and its effects on us, while Norwegian students interrogate and redefine the very concept of printmaking.

The expanding concept of printmaking and the effects of digital technology both feature large in this year’s Graphica Creativa triennale. In their art, students create eclectic combinations of methods and techniques, thus pointing out the way towards a new, expanded field of graphic art in which traditions, techniques and hybrid forms all coexist.

The four higher education institutions featured in the show are the Academy of Fine Arts at University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland; Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo in Norway; Geidai, Tokyo University of the Arts in Japan; and University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The theme and the featured artworks can also be accessed online at graphicacreativa.fi.

The Graphica Creativa triennale has been held in Jyväskylä since 1975. From 1998 the organiser has been the Jyväskylä Art Museum. Graphica Creativa is one of the oldest international print exhibitions in the Nordic countries and the only one regularly organised in Finland.

Dyscorpia

University of Alberta