Once again the MAK presents the results of the “100 Best Poster” competition, offering modern and exciting design concepts at the cutting edge of real-life visual culture. The overlap between art and commerce constantly generates new forms of artistic expression.This exhibition shows that the MAK is further extending one of the museum’s key maxims – to find the path between tradition and experiment – to the area of communication design.

The posters awarded surprise with new and innovative forms of expression in communication design, illustrating the full range of tendencies which currently inform this medium constantly vying for artistic recognition. The presentation in a museum setting directs attention to the creative value of the medium that normally goes for advertising effect only.

“Creativity results from the readiness of letting something grow. A sense of experimentation, of trying out something new – although there are proven classic forms – always involves a risk”, says jury chairwoman Anette Lenz. From 1,527 entries by 463 artists participating, the jurors Anette Lenz ( Paris , France ), Erwin K. Bauer ( Vienna , Austria ), Peter Frey ( Aarau , Switzerland ), Heike Grebin ( Berlin , Germany ) and Bernhard Stein (Berlin, Germany) chose one hundred coequal winners. The range of winners – 52 from Germany, 11 from Austria, and 37 from Switzerland, among them professional designers, graphic design offices, advertising agencies, but also academy students – demonstrate the stylistic and formal openness of the competition.

“100 Best Posters 06” will be shown in an engrossing exhibition design developed as a semester project at the School of Art and Design Berlin Weissensee under the direction of Stefan Koppelkamm and Helmut Staubach as an extraordinary form of presentation that is adaptable to different venue conditions. Relating to the fleeting nature of the medium, the posters will be hanging from more than sixty helium balloons of different sizes, which give a special dynamic to the exhibition space.

Jury Annette Lenz, Paris (President); Heike Grebin, Berlin; Bernard Stein, Berlin; Erwin K. Bauer, Vienna; Peter Frey, Aarau

Curator Peter Klinger, MAK Library and Works on Paper Collection

Catalogue "100 Beste Plakate 06. Deutschland Österreich Schweiz 100 Best Posters 06. Germany Austria Switzerland", is published by 100 Beste Plakate e. V., designed by Erich Brechbrühl, with contributions by Nikolaus Troxler, Anette Lenz and Michael Dreyer, German/English, 220 pages, Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz 2007,€ 35