Pictures at Play: Metafiction in Art

The art in this exhibition contains an extraordinary sense of playfulness and surprise. It comes from metafictive books: those that tell stories about stories and about the art of storytelling itself. Artists experiment with styles, typography, and page design to delightfully disrupt the rules of how books usually work. 
 
Travel through stories that break the fourth wall, where narrators and characters directly address the reader. Witness familiar characters acting out of character or find stories that contain other stories in them. In blurring the lines between author, narrator, and reader, these books subvert our expectations about the real world and the world of fiction. 

Curated by Cathryn M. Mercier, PhD

What to Expect

Guests can enjoy work by 29 artists in a variety of media. They can read books and “remix” story titles on a magnetic bookshelf. Gallery graphics add a sense of surrealism.  
 

Digital Technology & Art

In the exhibition Pictures at Play: Metafiction in Art, artists employ all kinds of media. 

The medium is the material artists use to create their art such as ink, watercolor, pastel, or graphite. They apply the medium to a support, or surface, like paper or canvas. In our labels, we might describe an artwork as “watercolor on paper” or “oil on board.” 

Many contemporary artists take advantage of today’s technologies to create their illustrations on the computer. We call this “born-digital artwork.” Artists may also draw or paint elements with traditional media, and then scan and assemble them using graphics software. When this is the case, our labels describe the artwork as a “digital collage.” We make high-resolution prints of digital works for display in our exhibitions.  

Flip through the slideshow below to look at some of the digital artworks featured in Pictures at Play. The caption for each includes more detail on the exact processes and programs the artists employed.