Showing posts with label Prljavo kazaliste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prljavo kazaliste. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2025

My Work at European Design Festival Show

I’m pleased to let you know that starting June 6th, my work is being featured in the Eccentricityexhibition, part of the European Design Festival 2025 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition includes my design for Prljavo Kazalište’s LP record, covers created for Danas and Time magazines, and my OP-ED page designs for The New York Times.

 

European Design Festival 2025 is taking place in Ljubljana, and is organized by the Brumen Foundation. One of the central events of the Festival is the exhibition Eccentricity – Design From the Off-Centre, which explores contemporary design and the historical legacy of design in the former Yugoslav republics through the thematic lens of radical and unconventional design approaches. These approaches deliberately break established standards, challenge or even invert our perceptions of what design and visual communication are.

 

The exhibition concept revolves around two related notions – eccentricity and off-centre – to simultaneously express both the nature of the creative practices showcased and the position of our design cultures in relation to the so-called centres, to what is often uncritically accepted as the source, model, or mainstream of design throughout history and today. In other words, rather than positioning ourselves in relation to undeniably strong (“Western”) traditions of typography, posters, illustration, book design, advertising, and the like, this exhibition confronts us with works defined by strong concepts and provocative communication gestures. These are realized across a broad spectrum of media and approaches, all aiming to understand design as a reflective and discursive practice – one that, beyond métier and skill, has something to say about communication itself, the social context in which it emerges, the public space it inhabits, the ripples it creates – and, above all, about ourselves.

 

The exhibition includes works by designers, studios, and artists such as Mihajlo Arsovski, Boris Bućan, Dora Bilić & Tina Mueller, Vanja Cuculić, Sanja Bachrach Kristofić & Mario Krištofić, Branko Bačanović Bambi, Ferenc Barat, Jože Brumen, Lana Cavar & Narcisa Vukojević, Eduard Čehovin, Zoran Đukić / ĐKĆ, Bojana Fajmut, Orsat Franković, Damir Gamulin, Grupa Ee, Mirko Ilić, Sanja Iveković, Radmila Jovandić Đapić, Mihajlo Kalabić, Šejla Kamerić, Dalida Karić-Hadžiahmetović, Anur Hadžiomerspahić, Tomato Košir, Dejan Kršić, Tomaž Kržišnik, Miljenko Licul, Boris Ljubičić, Dalibor Martinis, Slobodan Mašić, Studio Imitacija Života, Ira Payer /SuperstudioStudio Sonda, Ranko Novak, Novi Kolektivizam, Zdravko Papič, Nejc Prah, Sanja Iveković, Goran Trbuljak, Tanja Radež, Petja Selan, Slavimir Stojanović, Talent, Trio Sarajevo, Jovan Trkulja, Borut Vild, Matjaž Vipotnik, Ivana Vučić, Marko Vuleta Đukanov, Irena Woelle, Primož Zorko and many others.

 
The author of the Eccentricity exhibition is Marko Golub.









 

Friday, March 3, 2023

One Thing Leads to Another

Recently, when browsing on Boo-Hooray, an online underground movement archive, to my surprise, I noticed that they featured my art created in 1979 in their "Record Dreams" catalogue.

I created that art on my kitchen table as the LP cover for the then-unknown Croatian punk band Dirty Theater (Prljavo kazaliste). I came up with the idea for this cover partly because the band was very young and didn't know exactly how to play. They wanted to sound like The Rolling Stones, but they sounded punk because of their lack of skills. Also, referencing The Rolling Stone's song "Some Girls", Dirty Theater had a song named "Some Boys". Because of all these elements, I created this image. The record became an instant hit in Yugoslavia. 

After that, I did many other things. I moved to the US and almost forgot about that project. 

Suddenly, in 2012, the Hayward Gallery in London created "Someday All the Adults Will Die": Punk Graphics 1971—1984 show.
Among others, they exhibited my cover.

In the review of their show, The Huffington Post featured my art with the caption "One of the revolutionary graphics on show"

Soon after that, Rizzoli published the book "Punk: An Aesthetic", in which they featured Dirty Theater's LP. I was extremely pleased because Dirty Theater's LP was featured on a spread with one of my favourite records, "No Exist" by The Clash.

In 2018, Jens Muller and Julius Wiedemann featured the cover art in a spread about my work in their monumental 2-volume book "The History of Graphic Design" published by Taschen.

Then, the cherry on the cake, in 2023, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) included that cover in their collection. 

Not bad for a 2-day work on a kitchen table.

 

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Punk: An Aesthetic

One of my first record cover designs for the Croatian punk band Prljavo Kazaliste (Dirty Theatre), from 1979 is included  "Punk: An Aesthetic" book.

Punk: An Aesthetic Authors: Jon Savage, William Gibson, Linder Sterling, Johan Kugelberg (Editor), Published by Rizzoli, New York

'Someday All the Adults Will Die': Punk Graphics 1971 - 1984, art show

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Dirty Theatre

Friend of mine and amazing Croatian graphic designer, Dejan Dragosavac Ruta, notified me of "Someday All the Adults Will Die": Punk Graphics 1971—1984, a show which just opened at the Hayward Gallery Project Space in London. 

Included in the show is one of my first record cover designs for the Croatian punk band Prljavo Kazaliste (Dirty Theatre), from 1979.