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2nd International Triennial of Graphic Arts 1998

14 September - 15 October 1998
Old Town Hall and Strahov Monastery, Prague

Grand Prix: Luiz Monforte, Brazil, Catherine's Wheel or the House as a Labyrinth, mixed media

Luiz Monforte, an artist and professor of art, makes the diskette a matrix and then builds it up by a rhythm of alternating construction and deconstruction, drawing upon fragments of his residual memory, using his free and volatile cybernetic tool - privileging his digital composition by fixing it to a hight-quality legitimate support (BFK paper). He is able to print a range of amazingly vibrant and elaborate colors rarely attempted by this technique. The true master design is the sovereign "idea", somewhere on an exalted terminal within the head of the artist and scanned directly onto his digital palette. The quality of feedback possessed by an image data bank is a decisive part of this creative process. We have before us a new art medium which few have mastered in such a valid way. (Maria Bonomi, curator of the Brazilian collection)

First Prize: Eeva-Liisa Isomaa, Finland, Page from History Book, soft ground, photopolymergravure

It's a mystery. And a game. And suddenly you understand that it is life itself. It takes you to new places and situations - there is no return - and how many times will you take the wrong path? And looking into the labyrinth of time you will understand that there were plenty of times you almost touced the presence, but this was long, long ago, and the you were not you - suddely there was just this open door to the impossible - you were not outside the mirror but a reflection and the one who was standing in front of you was not you - a total stranger - but you could remember hes dreams. (Eeva-Liisa Isomaa commenting her work related to the labyrinth)

Second Prize: Santiago Serrano, Spain, To be called H, inkjet Santiago Serrano proceeds from the same roots, even though he adds his own personal emphasis; his poetic setting is likewise indisputable, as is his exceptional mastery of materials and ability to allow chance to work in his art with the precision of a clock-maker. His austere formal and chromatic repertoire (the square, triagle, a minimum of lines, grey shadows, ochre and brown), opens up to various signifiers hidden in word and myth and allows that which is mute to speak and the mysterious to reveal the cipher to its secret. (Mariano Navarro, curator of the Spanish collection)

Third Prize: Andrzej Bednarczyk, Poland, Legend on Shrounds in Which His Body Was Not Wrapped, glass objects, layer print Andrzej Bednarczyk creates a spatial construction from his graphics - pieces of materials - rigorously simple and at the same time forcing us to wander, to seek a path, to "read" its parts and reconstruct the meaning of the whole - even is this is non-existent. (Magdalena Hniedziewicz, curator of the Polish collection)

Honorary Prize for the Most Thematically Focused Collection: Bulgary, curator - Plamena Dimitrova Račeva

Cvetan Krustev, The Semantic Experiment for a Spiral

Historically, the arriving at the Labyrinth's centre starting from the extreme point of some initiation, introduces us to an invisible lodge which the Labyrinth builders always leave undecoded, i.e. this is the centre (i.e. the place) which everyone may fill-in according to one's intuition or one's personal taste. If the logic of the Labyrinth presents a rotation around a hardly accessible centre of semantics which may be individually discovered and replaced, then we shall witness outburst of spiritually structured realities related to the interpretation of: sensuality and instinct - Lyouben Kostov; mastering of emotions - Monika Romenska; shaping of speech and associations - Dimitrina Sevova; study on the senses - Pravdolyub Ivanov; research of the visual perception - Tzvetan Krastev; didactic of the personal living - Stefan Bojkov.

Award of the Mayor of Prague 1: Gunter Damisch, Austria, Red Field Paths, etching, monotype Gunter Damish, one of the most distinctive pedagogical personalities of the Viennese Academy, has won recognition as an artist in the international arena despite his relatively young age. He can articulate very clearly what motivates his work: "My ideal is an artist who, like a scientist, enters unknown territory, builds his shelter there and awakens this land to life through his work and through the fact that he begins to cultivate it." (Walter Koschatzky, curator of the Austrian collection)

Award of Grapheion Review: A. Balasubramaniam, India, Window 90, mixed media A. Balasubramaniam works with silkscreen overprinting on holograms. The hologram is in itself one of the most perfect 'compulsory paths' for the human eye; the artist's unusual use of it, with subtle overlay, gives us images which, like the Minotaur, cannot be ignored. (Benoit Junod, curator of the Indian collection)

Award of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ČR: Oldřich Kulhánek, Czech Republic, Ecce Homo No. 7, lithograph The "maze" of mannerist perspectives in convex mirrors have their own "direct" follower in the blasphemous metamorphoses of actual human faces and situations of Oldřich Kulhánek. (Simeona Hošková, member of the selective jury of the Czech collection)

Award of the Inter-Kontakt-Grafik Foundation: Patsy Payne, Australia, Arrythmia II., woodcut, linocut

In Patsy Payne's work the labyrinthine connections are between the mind and body, between emotion and logic, objectivity and subjectivity. There is an ebb and flow in the balance between each as an interwoven element in the other, rather than as binary opposites. As a student of science she is fascinated by the human genome project involving the mapping of genes on the chromosomes of human DNA. The connection between the encoded matter of the human structure, DNA and our spirit, our persona, our individuality, is like a maze. When the data is known, she asks, will we then know what we are? (Mirabel Anne Fitzgerald, curator of the Australian collection)

Award of the Morpa company: Wanda Mihuleac, France, Labyrinth, etching, aquatint Wanda Mihuleac offers to each, who dreams about a labyrinth, new conctretisations of this fundamental structure of the Imaginary: monumental labyrinths in permanent construction and deconstruction of alleys' walls, returns, exits. Labyrinth of a human body, this sensitive citadel of our life, where the terms inside and outside commute - reverts and becomes our skind. Labyrinths of psalters and dances, because Wanda also dances in her performances. It is also a reminder that the labyrinth before all at its origin, which fades in the gloom of time, was a dance. A whole Wandy Mihuleac's work is a unique celebration of the labyrinth. (Jean-Clarence Lambert, curator of the French collection)

Award of the Grafobal company: Pavel Makov, Ukraine, Toy Truck in the CBotanical Gardens, etching, intaglio
	Sometimes that, we regarded as a labyrinth, is a direct path, and sometimes that we expected to be straight becomes a maze. Man never knows. (Pavel Makov commenting his work related to the labyrinth)

Award of the Gemma Gallery: Robert Brun, Slovakia, Journey No. 2, dry point, relief, serigraphy Robert Brun makes use of contrasting creative means. He has an analytical vision which he combines with geometrical elements. His breaking down of the figural form into fragments and shreds represents new forms of destruction. (Eva Trojanová, curator of the Slovakian collection)

Honorary Mention: Jiří Anderle, Czech Republic, Four Figures in a Labyrinth, sdry point The artistic vision, pregnantly formulated, of Jiří Anderle at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s inspired a whole current of the middle generation, for whom the central theme became the "labyrinth of time". (Simeona Hošková, member of the selective jury of the Czech collection)

Honorary Mention: Alena Kučerová, Czech Republic, Fillet motif III, perforated tin plate The chiaroscuro perforated landscapes by Alena Kučerová, intersected by "Ariadne's threads" of glowing lights, belong to the most suggestive and personal labyrinthine visions in Czech art, in which the image of nature reflects the order of the world and becomes a part of the mysterious cosmos of life. (Simeona Hošková, member of the selective jury of the Czech collection)

Honorary Mention: Dušan Kállay, Slovakia, Cluster, etching Dušan Kállay's works form an inner continuity with fantastic art. He is the type of artist who weaves a brilliant linear drawing into neologisms evoking non-existing beings in unreal spaces. His works represent the classical image of the contemporary labyrinth. (Eva Trojanová, curator of the Slovakian collection)