Gábor Palotai (1956) is a notable member of the international graphic design scene. His works operate with a holistic concept of visual culture and therefore his artistic and design practice is completely intertwined. Reflecting his expanded understanding of graphic design, in his consistently formulated oeuvre, besides conventional formats and media, other, hardly classifiable or less common genres are present; such as conceptual photography, graphic design novel, printed textiles, non-narrative digital motion pictures or even public plaques.
Among his recurring working methods are abstraction, repetition and modularity. He often arranges his abstract, not easily decodable, succinct images in linear sequences or artist books. While Palotai’s reduced and minimal visual language is established upon the image-making tradition beyond modernity, his verbal references are animating the topoi of the nearly three-thousand-year-old European culture. His works are centred around man-made systems and rules: like the process of categorization, the construction and handling of natural science collections, the investigation of urban structures or the centuries-old principles of the representation of landscapes. His latest works, as fragments of a contemporary studiolo, are presenting a 21th century thinker’s peculiar, yet somehow familiar mindset.
