Brno Echo: Ornament and Crime from Adolf Loos to Now

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Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic, 2008, Czech and English

Nonfiction, Graphic Design

ISBN: 9788070271865

Published on the occasion of the 23rd International Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno, 2008. "Brno Echo" was a multimedia design exhibition created by Abbott Miller for the Brno Biennial of Graphic Design. The original logo for the Brno Biennial, designed by the Czech designer Jiří Hadlač, features concentric lines making up a letter "B". This pattern served as a starting point for the exhibition. With a combination of print and multi-media graphics, typography, fabrics, photography and decorative arts, "Brno Echo" uses the visual motif of concentric lines to reveal graphic echoes resonating between past and present. The exhibition explores how concentricity is a shared vocabulary, linking disparate contexts and media across time and geography. Drawing upon various international sources, including the rich collections of the Moravian Gallery, the exhibition stages a dialogue between objects and images. The installation design gives this dialogue substance in galleries by transforming the space into a form of graphic echo chamber. Walls and pedestals pulsate with concentric lines encircling and framing the objects on display. "Brno Echo" explores which simple, atavistic impulses are fundamental characteristics of design, gestures that interconnect everything from the Wiener Werkstätte through pop art to our current retro-futurism. Concentric lines frame, re-formulate, demarcate, decorate, and emphasize. "Brno Echo" makes a visual argument for understanding design as a cosmopolitan practice, one that unifies different cultures and periods.

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