Art/Design Review – Illustrative 09

Berlin has been practically wallpapered with the friendly CMYK-colored pencils that are the funky protagonists of the posters informing about Illustrative, the “leading international forum for contemporary illustration and graphic art”.

Of course, this is something jovoto couldn’t miss and so I went out to the beautiful venue of Villa Elisabeth in Berlin Mitte to find out what the créme-de-la-créme of illustration has to offer.
On 3 levels, visitors get to see an array of installations, prints, books, animations, and the occasional wood- or textile piece. There’s a lot of color and and figurative work: faces, freaks, little monsters and robots seem to be looking at you from all corners. (No, I don’t mean the other visitors)

Erik Sandberg

Skinner

Rebecca Maeve Manley

That IS a lot of fun, but after the initial excitement because of all the pretty colors wears off, I’m left with the question: What is actually being illustrated here? I started to think that, in this exhibition, I was missing some of the things that have fascinated me recently. Where are, for example, infographics (like some of these) and data visualization (and these)? Aren’t those interesting fields of contemporary illustration?

Anyway, this piece called the perpetual storytelling apparatus by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus is quite interesting. An apparatus which prints rolls and rolls of white paper with cryptic drawings. The paper just flows out onto the floor and you ask yourself what program runs the printer and what the drawings are trying to tell us.

I’m not going to give it away, but in case you’re considering to visit illustrative, I advise you to have a quick look at the storytelling machine’s website to give you a little more context.

The exhibition is on until Nov 1st

@ Elisabethkirche, Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstraße 3, Mitte

Open daily 11am-8pm