Author(s): Peter Thaler

Art

The recent revival of dilettante and outsiders art has brought an immense visual wealth to the world of character design. Artists release their creativity through spontaneous freehand drawing and create untamed, edgy and unparalleled beings. Their fast, eruptive and rough drawing techniques can be seen as a therapy to the sterility of the flood of digital images. Common sympathy seekers, consumer mascots and pop icon characters are re-traced and translated into an emotional, personal, diary-like language.Pictoplasma presents a fine selection of the most adventurous images from a global scene of artists, working mainly with a pen or analogue techniques such as water colour, collage or photo montage. Besides showcasing the key players of what is being labelled 'fractured figuration' or 'new psychedelic folk', "Pen to Paper" tells of the longing to bridge the inevitable gap between the human body and the realm of the image. It comes with works of Mehdi Hercberg alias Shoboshobo, Allyson Mellberg Taylor, Andrew James Jones, Charles Glaubitz, John Casey, Luke Ramsey, Eric Shaw, Thomas Bernard, Lane Hagood, Stephane Prigent alias Kerozen and many more.