‘Tomorrow Was A Montage’ screening and talk
Published On Wed 18 Nov 2015 by Roddy Isles
Astonishing animations and an in-depth analysis of stunning East European poster art will feature in public events taking place around the ‘Tomorrow Was a Montage’ exhibition programme at the Cooper Gallery at the University of Dundee over the next week.
The exhibition brings together work by three generations of East European artists around the practice of montage and features graphic design, animation, films and performance. Montage was particularly common in Poland, where poster art was elevated to a new level and would go on to significantly influence the international development of graphic design.
Graphic artist and designer Andrzej Klimowski, an expert in the history of Polish Poster School, will deliver an Exhibition Talk at the Gallery on Thursday, 19th November. This will be followed by the first Scottish screening of the astonishing animations created by film-maker and painter György Kovásznai on Thursday, 26th November.
“We are delighted to welcome Andrzej Klimowski here to bring a new voice to the programme for our major Autumn exhibition,” said Cooper Gallery curator Sophia Hao. “Klimowski will discuss the practice of collage as a prevalent method used in Polish graphic art and design throughout the twentieth century, reflecting on the works of artists in ‘Tomorrow Was a Montage’ and their contemporaries.
“We are excited to reveal the works of György Kovásznai during the Film Screening on the 26th – he is acknowledged as a crucial representative of 20th century Hungarian art. In the 1960s he provided one of the first visual commentaries on an emerging urban pop culture in Budapest and his films critically reflected upon the social and political contexts of contemporary culture in Hungary in the 60s and 70s. During his lifetime he positioned himself as an avant-garde, dropping out of art school early stating “I simply left because I considered the teachers untalented and its spirit witless” and then going on to make radically political animations.
“Montage is never neutral or indifferent. The intimate strangeness of montage unsettles all depictions of the world, offering an alternative image through fragments, juxtapositions, sudden illuminations, jarring proximities and a suspicion of systems.”
‘Tomorrow Was a Montage’ features 60 poster works by the internationally celebrated graphic designer Roman Cie?lewicz, exhibited for the first time in Scotland, and films by preeminent filmmakers including Jan Lenica’s 1963 animation Labyrinth, considered to be one of the finest political animations ever made, and Zbigniew Rybczy?ski’s 1983 Oscar-winning Tango.
Bringing the ethos of the exhibition into the contemporary is the work of the up-and-coming film and sound artist Wojciech B?kowski, who presented a performance of sound collage during the preview evening on 29th October, the video of which is available on the Cooper Gallery website.
Pioneered in the first half of the twentieth century by the Surrealists and early Soviet filmmakers, montage became a radical subversive strategy of dissonance and shock for artists, designers, writers and thinkers seeking to challenge stereotypical images of the contemporary.
‘Tomorrow Was a Montage’ provides an opportunity to view rarely seen works that epitomise the visual language and polemical politics of the Former East in the 1960s and 70s, alongside contemporary works that demonstrate the enduring cogency of montage as an artistic method.
The Exhibition Talk by Andrzej Klimowski takes place at Cooper Gallery at 6-7pm on Thursday, 19th November. The György Kovásznai screening takes place on Thursday, 26th November 2015 from 6-7.30pm.
The exhibition will remain open until 18th December and more information is available at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/exhibitions/tomorrow-was-a-montage/.