Beyond Paper Plane

The Beyond Paper Plane travelling exhibition project presents contemporary Czech illustrators and artists with a particular focus on children’s books.

The curatorial selection features books that combine a three-dimensional object with an independent work of art. This allows the books to offer a much greater sense of space and haptics and promotes the authenticity of the material. Contemporary children’s books have the potential for further interactive and educational use, whether it is the analogue manual finishing of the illustrations or their transfer into virtual reality, allowing children to immerse themselves in the game. The illustrations experiment with unusual materials, such as sheet metal, textiles, optical foils, photographs or found objects, pushing the boundaries of the conventional book format and the traditionally associated media such as watercolour, drawing, printmaking or painting.

The exhibition is divided into 8 thematic sections and in addition to the books, it includes related art objects, toys, archival book prototypes, short animated movies and a computer game for children.

Curator: Emma Hanzlíková
Exhibition Design: OKOLO
Contact Person: Anna Hrabáčková (hrabackova@czechcentres.cz), Anastasiia Artemyak (artemyak@czechcentres.cz)

Model z knihy Město pro každého © Jiří Franta, David Böhm

Táta a princezna Rozárka © Marie Urbánková

Exhibition Design

The exhibition installation refers tothe phenomenon of the fixed and uniform banana boxes. The design principle of the cardboard boxes also supports the idea of the most famous export product of the Czechoslovak publishing house Artia – pop-up books. It was the three-dimensional and often moving children’s fairy tale books constructed by the pioneers of the field Rudolf Lukeš (1923–1976) and Vojtěch Kubašta (1914–1992) that inspired us to explore the unconventional Czech illustration for children of the past few decades that we present in several thematically divided categories.