1 INTERNATIONAL REVIew of contemporarY PRINTS, BOOK AND PAPER | 23 YEARBOOK | 2019 „The mechanical straight lines harmoniously reflect the unlimited emotional overflow in the uncontrolled corrosion and controlled etching which makes the inner tension of the work protrude through the picture. The work is heavy, noble and solemn with the rational pursuit of metaphor and symbol and it is shocking to people.“ (Zhang Minje about Lukasz Koniuszy´s work Habitable Structure) ↑) CONTENTS (4) LIGHT / MATTER: Art at the Intersection of Dear readers, Photography and Printmaking After the opening issue of the renewed Grapheion, whose preparation was somewhat (Walter Jule, with contributions influenced by the limited possibilities associated with continuing the challenging by Tracy Templeton and Ingrid Ledent) project under new conditions, we are offering you another issue today, which we believe is linked to the successful years of printed Grapheion by a richer range of (14) topics. I am pleased that more material than this number can contain has been The Third Macau Printmaking Triennial, 2018 gathered. I am also happy for the responses received from the invited authors, and for (Walter Jule) the fact that the name of the revue (including its logotype) provokes in the witnesses a feeling that this is an act to be signed in again. (21) The International Serigraphy Symposium One of them is Walter Jule, who is the author of two contributions: an article on the Ostrava / ISSO Light/Matter exhibition, which took place in two reprises in the USA and Canada, (Zbyněk Janáček a Marek Sibinský) and which focused on the presence of photography, its images and technical procedures in prints. In his second contribution, he returns to the Triennial of Prints (24) in Macao (2018) and his role as a jury member of this international print show. Horses in Ballet Shoes, Kings in Costumes, and Actors under Rockets For those who want to refresh the history of the use of photomechanical methods in (Miroslav Kindl) printmaking and polygraphy and to learn what a transformation of these technologies have taken place since their beginnings to the present, my contribution (29) entitled Brief Overview of the Use of Photomechanical Methods in Printmaking and Graphic Art of the Year 2019 Polygraphy is intended. The article of Miroslav Kindl, which commemorates the period of the second half of the 17th century, is also focused on history, when art of (35) print documented splendid festivals and theatrical performances in the production Karel Malich: Energy that of royal courts, which only seemingly are not related to the present and its affection does not disappear in spectacles of all kinds. (Zdeněk Freisleben) Zbyněk Janáček and Marek Sibinský, the organizers of the international symposium (37) of serigraphy at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic, A Brief Overview of the History of the whose results have been exhibited several times, report on the fact that a superbly Application of Photomechanical Printing equipped studio at the art school can also become a place for artists to meet and Techniques (Ondřej Michálek) create original works, which have been recently shown in the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region (GASK) in Kutná Hora. (43) Chronicle / Overwiev of exhibitions, Just as the previous issue, also this one brings the balance of the show and competitions, conferences and competition Graphic Art of the Year 2019, which once again found refuge in the graphic fairs exhibition halls of the Municipal House in Prague. And in its Chronicle, Grapheion offers interesting news on domestic and foreign exhibitions, which have already been or are under way in the world, and which, taken together, testify to the continuing interest in this domain and its presentation. Unfortunately, it also presents obituary of Karel Malich, recently deceased versatile Czech artist and also laureate of the →) Vladimír Boudník Award. I believe that Grapheion, in this wider form, and also in the new layout, represents a fuller response to the expectations that its readers put into it. And if this is not the case, we will be grateful for any suggestions that you may address to us. Ondřej Michálek 4 INTERNatioNAL PRINT EXHIBITIONS INTERNatioNAL PRINT EXHIBITIONS 5 complexity and disguising of temporal- ity occurring in commercial images have driven many contemporary artists LIGHT / MATTER: to seek meaning in the friction between ART technologies. Combining projected photographic images with sculptural AT THE INTERSECTION elements and sound for instance, artists often mix unmusical elements together until the whole no longer resembles OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND the parts. Increasingly, artists utilize any and all technologies available to experiment with virtual reality and PRINTMAKING “immersive environments”. WALTER JULE, WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY TRACY TEMPLETON AND INGRID LEDENT Is this attraction to spectacle the inevi- table outcome of our blind acquies- The histories of art and technology are intimately cence to the scientific and technologi- interwoven. From the firing of clay to the forging cal imperative? Is it technology and the assertions of Post-Post Modernist of steel and the invention of paper, canvas and paint to thought which have driven artists moveable type and the printing press, the marriage away from medium-specific practice to of technology and art has been central to the pursuit “issue based” work? At this juncture, and in an effort to of knowledge and the evolution of creative expression. renew critical discussion regarding the Perhaps more than any other art form, printmaking has relationship between technology and conceptual framework in art, curators, embodied this interaction. For over a thousand years, Tracy Templeton (USA) Walter Jule printmakers have continually adopted new (Canada) and Ingrid Ledent (Belgium) technologies of reproduction to explore ideas and proposed a re-evaluation of the world photo-print movement which began in concepts in the form of multiple-originals capable the mid-twentieth century. LIGHT/ of reaching a broad audience. MATTER: Art at the Intersection of Pho- tography and Printmaking opened at the Grunwald Gallery of Art, Indiana Although artists had long been using explored aerial views, patterns, close- University in the fall of 2017 and trav- tools such as the camera obscura in ups, abstraction, and lack of scale eled to the University of Alberta, Cana- their work, the introduction of the “me- while painting explored the structure da in the spring of 2018. chanical medium” of photography initi- of cinema. While photography contin- ated the uneasy relationship between ued to seek recognition as “art,” print- Bringing together almost 100 works technology, “fine art”, and craft that making, especially in Europe and the (1968–2017) by 45 artists from 22 coun- continues to this day. One side argued Americas continued to be viewed as tries for the first time, the show focus- photographs might be valuable as “doc- the “handmaiden” of painting and es on an example of “simultaneous dis- uments” but should not be considered drawing. covery” in the arts, when printmakers “art” because they are made by ma- Since the mid-twentieth century, around the world, schooled in the tra- chine and lack the directness of work increasingly rapid technological devel- ditional analogue techniques of wood- created by hand. Many artists, how- opment has overshadowed these dis- cut, etching and stone lithography ever, felt an irresistible attraction to tinctions. Today´s “image culture” is started to question the primacy of the sheer scope of information the me- dominated by photography and adver- drawing in graphic art and began “bor- dium offered. tising messages extolling the virtues of rowing” photomechanical techniques Photography had an immediate and consumerism. Enormous Jumbo-trons that were becoming obsolete in com- irreversible effect on the craft of mak- dwarf the architecture of public spaces mercial printing. While often hailed for ing in art. Within ten years of its intro- while the ubiquitous flicker of iPhones it´s technological inventiveness the “ar- duction, photo images outsold hand- commands the attention of pedestrians. rival” of the photo-print phenomenon, drawn prints in most major cities in Overwhelmed by the sheer promis- now approximately sixty years in dura- ↑↑) Tetsuya Noda, Japan Europe. Printmakers took up photogra- cuity of the image environment and the tion, might also serve as an important Diary – April 4th 1987 in Ueno, 1987, phy, and painters began imitating pho- “information enclosures” it creates, one “case study” in how cultural tradition woodcut, serigraphy, 57 × 119 cm tographic approaches, including might be forgiven the belief that all the has influenced the adoption and evolu- ↖) Akira Matsumoto, Japan blurred focus, asymmetrical cropping, possibilities and problems of visual / tion of new print technologies. As in all Fukei (Landscape a Chimney), 1978, serigraphy, 50 × 70 cm and pronounced perspective. pictorial language have been worked art movements, broad cultural factors The invention of stop-motion pho- out through the struggles of art history from within and without the world of ↗) Hideki Kimura, Japan Misty Dutch, 1998, tography brought science into play. In or been rendered irrelevant through art – conscious and unconscious, ideo- screen print, 76 × 56 cm the nineteenth and twentieth centu- the homogenizing effect of technologi- logical and symbolic – serve to simulta- ←) Carl Heywood,