Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol

36th Austrian Graphic Art Competition

25 May - 14 Jul 2019

Visual 36th Austrian Graphic Art Competition
Due to the high level of audience interest we have the pleasure to extend the exhibition of the 36th Austrian Graphic Art Competition through July 14, 2019.

For the first time in the history of the Austrian Graphic Art Competition, the 36th edition presents all of the more than 400 submitted works. The full range of contemporary graphic works submitted will be shared with the public unfiltered. The exhibition features an accumulation of widely differing approaches, forms, and concepts from the field of graphic art juxtaposed and superimposed in a wildly ordered arrangement.

The works are presented in alphabetical order according to the first letters of the artists’ names. The strict rules governing spacing gave rise to additional ordering criteria. The experiment poses a curatorial challenge. An effort was made to present the works in such a way that their interplay reflects the totality of graphic art, on the one hand, while the specific qualities of each work remain evident, on the other. Are the works capable of appearing as highly individual building blocks of graphic art for the very reason that they are not grouped according to formal or thematic criteria and the nearest environment of each individual work does not serve as a contextualizing frame? The ordering system is meant to allow the kaleidoscopic presentation of the disorderly arrangement of the disparate types and varieties of graphic art.

Visitors are invited to explore tendencies in the presentation, to pose artistic criteria of their own and to define media-related specifications for graphic art. How do analog cultural techniques relate to digital ones? What sensory, cognitive and emotional qualities and possibilities for articulation does graphic art have to offer?

The Austrian Graphic Art Competition is being held for the 36th time in 2019. It is the oldest artistic competition in Austria and took place for the first time in 1952. The competition was initiated by the State of Tyrol on the basis of an idea by draftsman Paul Flora and has since been conducted every two years. It has been hosted and presented in the form of an exhibition at the TAXISPALAIS since 1999.