Mirko Ilić: Time After Time After Time

On Thursday, September 11, at 8 p.m., the exhibition Time after Time after Time by artist Mirko Ilić will open at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

 

 

The exhibition by Mirko Ilić, entitled Time After Time After Time, represents a different reading of his oeuvre which, in an intriguing manner, connects the works from the fields of graphic design, illustration and comics created between the late 1970s and the present day. Drawing on the world’s largest museum collection of his works at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka and substantially expanded with the more recent creations, as well as the rarely exhibited works from all stages of his career, the exhibition is conceived more as an extensive essay on Ilić’s work and some of his creative methods, rather than a conventional overview in which the works are presented chronologically or according to the medium, technique, or character of the commission.

The thread running through the exhibition’s units and numerous thematic chapters represents the idea of time that is manifested in many of Ilić’s works in different forms, perspectives and possible interpretations. Although seldom the explicit focus of his works, time often emerges in many of them as a crucial conceptual, creative, cognitive, or narrative mechanism. If we were to observe Ilić’s comics created between the mid- and late 1970s and those he has produced since 2020, we would note that some of the most radical and humorous among them are exactly those that make us face the paradoxical concepts of the flow of time. Therefore, one of the three main exhibition units is dedicated to the medium of comic, as well as their echoes in Ilić’s subsequent design work.

Judging by the scope and communicative power, the central part of Ilić’s oeuvre lies in political illustration and design of the covers of newspapers and magazines. In this media context itself, the concept of time has a nearly sacred status – it suffices to note that he produced his best covers in Croatia in the 1980s for Danas (which means “Today”), which was then an exceptionally influential political weekly; since moving to New York in the second half of the 1980s onwards, he has illustrated and designed for newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times or Time Magazine, alongside many others whose names may not be so significant for this topic, but are certainly of great international importance. While timeliness, speed, reflection of the current moment are crucial for the mass media, in these works Ilić not only manages to reflect on contemporary events with power and nuance, but the very visual metaphors that he uses successfully pass the test of time. In other words, they are surprisingly understandable and communicative even several decades after the original context had faded. The second section of the exhibition presents these works.

The third and most extensive unit brings us a series of smaller thematic chapters, each addressing an aspect of time. Within them, all kinds of works collide, reflect, or are placed into dialogue – from theatrical posters for &TD Theater in Zagreb and the Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, books, comics old and new, LP and CD cover art, all the way to political illustrations and covers; from works based on drawing, those in 3D graphics and photography, all the way to the works focused on the visual dimension of text, letters, i.e., typography. This unit’s chapters include titles such as Labyrinth, Sequential Time, The Work of Time, Mechanical Time, Projected Time, Measurable Time, The Beginning, and The End; they confront us with the twisted and nonlinear concepts of time, the drama of birth and death, the manifestations of movement and process in otherwise static images, the intelligent concepts that seek an active observer willing to invest in the reading of images the very notion of – time.

About the artist

Mirko Ilić (b. Bijeljina, 1956) graduated from the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb. Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, while based in Zagreb, he published comics and illustrations, and designed for a wide range of clients – from youth press, record labels and theaters, to political magazines and newspapers. He published his first comic in 1976, and was the comics and illustration editor in Studentski list and Polet magazines. In the 1980s, he worked for popular journals and weeklies such as Start, Danas, and others. In the mid-1980s, he moved to the United States of America, where he worked as an illustrator and designer for some of the most important magazines and newspapers in America and the world. In 1991, Time Magazine appointed him art director in charge of international editions; in 1992, he became art director of The New York Times’ Op-Ed page. In 1995, he founded Mirko Ilić Corp., studio for graphic design, 3D computer graphics, and film credits. He has authored a number of books on design, either independently or in co-authorship with writer and journalist Steven Heller. He received numerous awards and accolades. His works are found in the collections of the world’s prestigious museums, including the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, MoMA in New York, and SFMoMA in San Francisco. He lives and works in New York.

Curators | authors of the text | authors of the exhibition design: Marko Golub and Sabina Salamon

Project partner: HDD – Croatian Designers Association

Graphic design: Željko Serdarević

Supported by: Ministry of Media and Culture of the Republic of Croatia, City of Rijeka, Primorje-gorski kotar County, City of Zagreb and Zagreb City Office for Culture and Civil Society