22 May 2013

4 PLASTER: International Festival of Poster and Typography at Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun

4 PLASTER
International Festival of Poster and Typography

PLASTER. International Festival of Poster and Typography Design
The fourth edition of the PLASTER Festival is above all based on confrontation between Polish and Italian artists working in the area of graphic design. As a part of this confrontation, we present an outdoor exhibition on the CoCA's boulevard, featuring large format posters of contemporary Italian designers - the show aims to reflect the current condition of poster design within the Apennine Penninsula. A solo show of posters by Tomasz Bogusławski, highly original Polish designer, is a national counterpoint to the outdoor presentation. His works, based on collage and sophistiocated typo, are presented in CoCA's performance space. The opening scenario of the exhibition includes a meeting with the artist himself, taking place in the CoCA Cinema. Centre's terrace stages another Polish-Italian juxtaposition, refering to contemporary typo design, illustration, ID projects. Next to the polish designer duo Fontarte ( Artur & Magdalena Frankowski ) we present works of 3 Italian artists - Cristina Chiappini, Raffaella Colutto, Silvia Sfligiotti. The last day of the festival features a pannel discussion dedicated to the theme of art duo's – couples working together, forced to make artistic concessions and to compromise. The pannel, entitled „Together or apart', features such designers as Homework, Witold Michorzewski, Sławomir Janiak, Fontarte, Silvia Sfligotti, Raffaella Colutto, Joanna Górska & Rafał Góralski, Hipopotam Studio. PLASTER Festival is always about art workshops – this year two Italian designers, Raffaella Colutto and Silvia Sfligiotti, host a two-day session (on the 22nd and the 23rd of May) dedicated to handmade typography design, essential shapes that take inspired from historical examples like the studies of Edward Johnston, considered the father of contemporary calligraphy, and from contemporary examples. Live act with typo animation is planned as the multimedia cherry on top of the PLASTER 2013 (Steve Nash & Pillow feat. Dj Funktion).


The 4th edition of Plaster: International Festival of Poster and Typography is a clash of modern and developing typography with poster art that remains defiant and escapes traditional project schemata.
Typography in poster constitutes raw color accents – the expression of compositional sections perfectly balances the rhythm of letters, words and sentences contained in it. The typographical sets appearing in visual identification, book and catalogue projects, co-resonate dynamically with the diverse, multidimensional graphic stratum.

At the one hand, Plaster Festival presents independent, conflicting graphic entities, on the other, it hints at the inevitable symbiosis between them. Project graphics is an organism aiding itself with the environment it lives in – a non-autonomous organism, yet definitely not a parasitic one.
Political events, technological revolution, social and cultural changes; all is filtered through design and it finds its reference in new, utilitarian project trends. We are not capable of predicting the shape of future graphic design. We do not know whether it will follow the omnipresent eclecticism, or oppose it by professing pure, developing form.
Plaster constitutes an important voice in the discussion, which not only stresses how crucial applied graphics is, being an element of reality, but it also analyzes the directions of the field's development.

Text by Curator Krzysztof Białowicz

Programme:

22.05 Wednesday:
7 PM
Opening ceremony
Exhibitions vernissage:
Contemporary Italian poster / plein-air exhibition
Tomasz Bogusławski / CoCA ground floor
Fontarte, Alizarina, Cristina Chiappini /
CoCA terrace, third floor
8 PM
Tomasz Bogusławski's lecture /
Cinema Centrum, CoCA
9 PM
Live act concert
Steve Nash & Vj Pillow feat Dj Funktion /
CoCA, Labsen

22—23.05 Wednesday—Thursday:
10 AM – 6 PM
Typography workshops / CoCA, Labsen
Raffaella Colutto, Silvia Sfligiotti

24.05 Friday:
11 AM – 5 PM
Conference:
Together or apart? / Cinema Centrum, CoCA
Sławomir Janiak & Witold Michorzewski,
Homework (Joanna Górska, Jerzy Skakun),
Alizarina (Silvia Sfligiotti, Raffaella Colutto),
Fontarte (Magdalena Frankowska, Artur Frankowski),
Galeria Rusz (Joanna Górska, Rafał Góralski),
Hipopotam Studio (Aleksandra Mizielińska, Daniel Mizieliński)