From avant-garde urban art to global recognition value, award-winning animation to viral Internet phenomena: the 14th Pictoplasma festival presents true virtuosos of contemporary character design and art. The featured artists challenge the way we recognize familiar facial patterns and demonstrate character power at its most emotive—radically abstracting the portrait, playfully flipping heads inside out, covering the inner void with grimacing masks, or pushing minimalist reduction to its limits. 

While international creators and producers gather in Berlin at the central PICTOPLASMA CONFERENCE to exchange strategies for the future of figurative aesthetics, the PICTOPLASMA FESTIVAL is an invitation to the curious and courageous to immerse themselves in the latest visual trends and world-class contemporary character design and art. It comprises the CHARACTER WALK EXHIBITIONS, presenting paintings, sculptures, and multimedia installations by 100 artists—most of them exhibiting in Berlin for the first time; ANIMATION SCREENINGS, bringing eye-candy, psychedelia, and character-driven narration to the big screen; and a series of PERFORMANCES AND CLUB NIGHTS that confront the audience with a multitude of characters face to face.