WILD ONES
This year’s biggest exhibition is called Wild Ones – expressive tendencies in [Czech] illustration, and we have selected 25 wild cartoonists from the past and present, from Josef Váchal to today’s students. We put the word “Czech” in brackets in the subtitle, because even though the exhibition mainly presents Czech authors and the domestic expressive tradition, we also added four foreign guests to the mix. In this year’s exhibition program, you will find works by Berlin-based painter-illustrator Paul Waak, world-famous Lithuanian artist, Egle Zvirblyte, Dutch artist-illustrator, Andrew Tseng, as well as illustrator, comic book artist, and risograph printer, Haras Ananas, from Austria. Wild Ones is an exhibition where you can savor Josef Váchal’s woodcuts alongside contemporary graphics with post-internet influences – we hope you will enjoy this bold concept.
Haras Ananas / Sarah Maria Schmidt (*1994) is an Austrian artist, illustrator, and member of the printing collective Potato Publishing in Linz. She studies Experimental Art at the University of Art and Design in Linz, and works in drawing, painting, animation, comics and tattooing. Her artistic expression is very energetic, full of colors and playfulness. Together with Potato Publishing, Sarah organizes workshops, residencies, and meetings of young artists, invites illustrators from all over the world to work at Potato Publishing’s riso-printing studio, and operates a zine library. She actively exhibits mainly at group exhibitions organized by friends in Austria and zine festivals all around Europe. In the Czech Republic, you can see her work at this year’s LUSTR festival for the very first time.
Andrew Tseng (*XY) is a Dutch artist working at the intersection of illustration and fine art. After finishing his bachelor’s degree in psychology, Andrew continued to study illustration at Utrecht University of the Arts. He is not afraid of a dynamic, disproportionate composition that gives the depicted subjects a slightly alien appearance, wild and contrasting color combinations, or caricatures of various social archetypes, which he places in absurd stories. Humor is always present in his work, almost always with a significant dose of sarcasm. In 2019, the Fontanel platform ranked him among the ten most interesting Dutch designers who completed their studies in the same year.
Egle Zvirblyte (*XY) is a Lithuanian illustrator, designer, and artist living in London. Her style is easily recognizable thanks to vivid colors, strong lines, and a funky atmosphere; most often she presents strong and self-confident female characters. Besides spending more than 12 years in London, she has lived in Melbourne, Tokyo, Bali, and Barcelona, working for clients worldwide in branding, advertising, product design, music, and fashion. Lately, she has been specializing in mural painting as well. Alongside her commercial work, Egle has exhibited in New York, Miami, London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Madrid, Milan, Dublin, Zurich, Barcelona, Brussels, and Utrecht.
Paul Waak (*1984) is a painter, sculptor, and illustrator based in Berlin, Germany. In his playful, colorful, and mainly figurative work, you can sense an influence of art brut and folk art as well as of post-Internet art and youth subcultures. His approach to topics so existential and archetypical as love, death, violence, friendship and beauty is both playful and satirical. Metaphorical on one hand, direct and simple on the other, Waak’s work is as tricksy as it is unsettling. Paul Waak was born in 1984, studied visual communication at the University of Art in Berlin and painting at Hunter College in New York, and has exhibited in galleries around the world, such as YUI Gallery, New York, Kunsthalle Exnergasse Vienna, Good Mother Gallery, Oakland and Weserhalle Berlin.