The Valencian Museum of the Enlightenment and Modernity and the UPV’s Master’s Program in Graphic Design and Typography explore the boundaries between legibility and imagery through typographic experimentation.
The Master’s Degree in Graphic Design and Typography (MAG), offered by the Higher Technical School of Aerospace Engineering and Industrial Design (ETSIADI) at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, opened yesterday, Wednesday, June 17, its new annual exhibition at the Valencian Museum of Enlightenment and Modernity (MuVIM). Under the title “CAPTCHA. I’m not a robot”, the exhibition offers a visual journey that challenges the traditional boundaries of graphic design, exploring the fine line where the written word loses its utilitarian function and becomes pure image. The event was a resounding success, attended by Paco Teruel Machí, the Deputy for Culture, and Vice Rector Débora Domingo Calabuig of the Office of the Vice Rector for Sustainable Campus Development at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
The exhibition’s curators, Begoña Jordá Albiñana and Nereida Tarazona Belenguer, highlight the warm reception this event has received from typography enthusiasts, students, and industry professionals, who were treated to a first look at more than 70 works by internationally renowned artists and studios such as Suso Pérez, Joan Quirós, Odosdesign, SUC Estudio, Diego Vainesman, Boke Bazán, Rosa Deltoro, Elmer Sosa, and Nohelia González, among others. These works take the digital phenomenon of CAPTCHAs as their starting point: typefaces that are deliberately distorted, deformed, and fragmented to demonstrate our humanity in the face of algorithmic automation.
[INSERT IMAGE 1: Overview of the room with the audience or a moment from the opening]
A typographic test of endurance with avant-garde roots
The exhibition, which is part of the long-standing collaboration between the MAG and the MuVIM that has been in place for more than a decade to highlight typographic research and design, “connects this digital issue with the roots of Dadaist and Surrealist experimentation—movements that, in their day, stripped typography of all solemnity to imbue it with new meanings,” as Nereida Tarazona notes.
Through a rigorous interplay of visual and digital techniques, the artists in this exhibition have taken the letter as their primary element, distorting it to its limits and positioning themselves within what Robert Bringhurst termed “hostile typography”: a visual filter in which illegibility is not a flaw, but rather a calculated conceptual and creative strategy.
[INSERT IMAGE 2: Close-up of one of the A3-sized prints on display in the gallery]
Catalog and Hours of Operation
To mark the exhibition, an exclusive catalog of approximately 100 pages has been published, compiling the artists’ conceptual texts and featuring in print all the works that bring this visual labyrinth to life.
Begoña Jordá highlights the importance of collaboration among institutions committed to culture: “As has become customary at the master’s program’s annual events, exhibitions such as ‘CAPTCHA. I Am Not a Robot’ cement Valencia’s status as an essential hub for design culture.”
The exhibition will be on view at the MuVIM during the summer months, with free admission for everyone. We would also like to remind you that on the official website of the UPV’s Master’s Program in Graphic Design and Typography https://masterartesgraficas.com/captcha/ Users will be able to view the artists’ works.
