Vicenza is ready to transform itself into an epicenter of creativity and artistic reflection and the capital of illustration: “Illustrious Festivals” – now in its sixth edition – will enliven Galleries of Italy with the personal exhibition of the great artist Javier Jaen.
“Illustri Festival” 2024 in collaboration with Gallerie d’Italia
Installations, personal and collective exhibitions will invite the public to explore the complexity of our time through illustration in this biennial event, hosted in the historic center of Vicenza. Dal 2014, Illustrious Festivals it is a container of the human and professional capital of the world of Italian illustration, a point of reference for illustrators and enthusiasts of this contemporary art form. It is organized byIllustrious Association with the Department of Culturetourism and the attractiveness of Municipality of Vicenza, in collaboration with Gallerie d’Italia in Vicenza, museum headquarters of Intesa Sanpaolo.
“Designing complexity” from birth is the main theme of the event. «Illustrating today is no longer just knowing how to draw»,- explained the creative director of the event, the illustrator Francesco Poroli – «Illustrating is communicating, looking at the world and trying to translate it by applying your own filter, trying to make it understandable to yourself and others».
The complexity he refers to Illustrious Festivals 2024 digs into the etymological sense of with-braid – knot several times, braid – trying to understand the world we live in, opening a dialogue with what happens, embracing its vastness and industriousness. Francesco Poli, Creative Director Illustri Festival he stated that «as visual communication professionals we can try to use our language and our talent to look at reality from new points of view and try to return it drawn, to do what illustration has always done: illuminate an idea and make it democratically accessible to everyone».
Javier Jaén: Concepts and stories translated into images
As per tradition of Illustrious Festivals, also the edition 2024 welcomes a “Most illustrious”: he is Javier Jaén, from Barcelona, born in ’83, with graphic design and fine arts studies in Barcelona, New York and Budapest behind him, an internationally renowned illustrator who, through his very personal and conceptual style, combined with a language that is sometimes playful, sometimes corrosiveallows you to explore everyone’s daily experience from a unique and privileged point of view, capable of unexpected metaphors and visual paradoxes.
His professional activity focuses on editorial illustrations, book covers and cultural communications for the most famous publications and institutions in the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Time, Harvard University, National Geographic, El País, Penguin Random House, Vueling Airlines e UNESCO. “My main job is translation,” Jaén explained. “I translate concepts and stories into images. I use graphic design, illustration and photography as ingredients in my work, although I don’t feel like a graphic designer, illustrator or photographer at all. They are just disciplines that help me dress up my ideas.”
From 28 June to 29 September 2024
Galleries of Italy, Vicenza
info: Gallerie d’Italia
