4th International Student Drawing Triennial 2023 – Drawing: fourth dimension
The competition is open to students of higher education institutions for art studies in Poland and worldwide, regardless of nationality.
Studying the fine arts is the adventure of a lifetime. It can feel like a brief flight, nice to the touch, paint-scented, tasting like chilli-flavoured chocolate. But it can also feel like wading barefoot across a river bed covered with weeds and silt and strewn with sharp rocks.
A tough nut to crack, especially at a time of the Anthropocene tectonic shifts with the looming vision of a bare, dried-up and barren Mother Earth. However, mercifully, nothing is determined yet. The battle of light against darkness is still raging and there is hope that life will find a way to endure.
Even if there is no escape from the meteorite that – like in the Lars von Trier film – moves toward our tiny globe, at least we can encounter the vision of a beautiful catastrophe. An artist’s vision, since studying the fine arts makes artists out of the people who have chosen this way, and who, as a result of the five years of learning, find the courage to become independent creators.
Usually, a diploma officially authorises them to take responsibility for their creative decisions. However, before the art school education is stamped with a seal in the diploma, numerous opportunities arise for the student to share their work with other people.
One of these opportunities is the MTRS International Triennial of Student Drawing, a Katowice event with an international reach. Its primary role amongst young art competitions is not so much to confront other artists but to update one’s relation to drawing. As a means of communication, drawing is democratic, meta-verbal and universal. It does not require using dictionaries or decoding messages by applying a cipher code known to a chosen few.
Drawing is to an artist what flour is to a baker, the criminal code to a judge, ropes to a sailor and numbers to an accountant. Drawing is everywhere, it is neither a woman nor a man, it precedes writing, language and thought but also follows its directly.
Drawing has no nationality, race or creed. The fourth dimension of drawing in the fourth edition of MTRS invites you to show how you perceive drawing and what it is to you. How you draw, what you draw, with what, where and why. Show us your drawings, and we will exhibit them for more people to see.
Outstanding drawing artists will look closely at your work and choose the most interesting pieces. But the competition is not our priority. We want you to send us a signal that you are there, and that art is hope.