The collection, mainly made up of items from the second half of the 20th century, is the work of Piotr Szaradowski, a fashion design lecturer at the School of Form in Poznań, and art and culture historian Mateusz Kozieradzki. While Szaradowski brings to Spotted Dotted his interests in displaying clothes in museums and the history of haute couture, Kozieradzki complements these with his expertise in the field of art. The duo are keen to show what artists and designers have in common. Rather than creating yet another exhibit on how art influences fashion, the duo set up kind of a dialogue between the garments and artworks that revolves around formal devices like composition, shape and rhythm.
‘Forces you to think’
A shirt made from Turkmenistani fabric, from around 1975, with contemporary sandals, photo: Pracownia Fotograficzna MNK
According to its organisers, Spotted Dotted is the first exhibition in Poland to talk about the likeness of modern paintings and high-end clothing. It’s divided into six sections, all devoted to a particular theme, e.g. outlining the silhouette, the power of colour. The first exhibits, two large-scale paintings by Katarzyna Tretyn-Zečević almost literally show how art and tailoring intertwine – they include sewed elements. Further on, in an area dedicated to the role of space, you can see Japanese garments that seem as flat as a table top, juxtaposed with Jan Berdyszak’s quasi-three-dimensional paintings. In another room, white walls and mannequins contrast with black dresses to better show how they shape the wearer’s silhouette. A linocut presenting a human figure provides context. The exhibition ends with a huge, colourful painting by Leon Tarasewicz that’s by a row of coloured dresses – a finale that shows, in quite an impressive way, how strong a sensation colour can be.
Stacja Kultura, a popular radio show on Polish Radio’s Czwórka station, declared the exhibition one that ‘forces you to think about what clothes design is and how much it has in common with art’.
