<title>Invitation to the Exhibition</title> Invitation to the Exhibition Fractal Cauliflower: Art Without Scales

Is the current design prepared to meet the needs and demands of today's society? How are traditional disciplines of design and fine arts transforming in the digital age? And how have the boundaries between individual fields of art shifted? Do they even exist anymore? Or does today’s world of both fine and applied arts appear as a fractal cauliflower, characterized by its scale-free properties, infinite intricacy of shapes, and immeasurable contours? These and similar questions are posed by students of the history and theory of design and new media at Prague's VŠUP as part of the online exhibition Fractal Cauliflower: Art Without Standards, which maps current phenomena in fine and applied arts and their reflection in the work of their colleagues from "umprumka".
Most of the eight sections of the Cauliflower are dedicated to design—whether it’s design striving to overcome physical and social barriers, or the role of design in relation to the concept of sustainable development. The boundary between sculpture and design is also explored, as well as the possibilities of conveying information through visual means of graphic design or the use of parametric design methods in architecture. A trio of sections primarily addresses fine arts—one contrasts the approach to painting as a traditional discipline with painting as a conceptual means of artistic expression, another deals with themes of representation of reality and reconstruction of the past in new media, and the last questions the meaning and position of illustration in the digital age.
The exhibition Fractal Cauliflower: Art Without Standards at www.fraktalnikvetak.cz will last until the end of June 2010.