AFTERIMAGE

Through the installation AFTERimage, C.T. Jasper deepens his ongoing engagement with the poster as a distinct and powerful communicative form, an interest previously explored in his earlier installation Hunting for Pheasants. While the posters of Hunting for Pheasants depicted figures associated with political assassinations, AFTERimage features thirty collaged posters for films that do not exist and probably never will. This deliberate absence becomes a conceptual gesture in itself: a meditation on memory, loss, and the act of visual suggestion detached from cinematic substance.

At the core of both works lies an enduring connection to the Polish School of Posters of the 1960s and 1970s—not merely in its stylistic attributes, but as an ideological and artistic phenomenon. Emerging from a distinct socio-political context, the Polish poster was never merely promotional; it was an autonomous art form. In stark contrast to Western cinematic posters that prioritized celebrity iconography and literal depictions of narrative, the Polish approach leaned into metaphor, abstraction, and visual poetry. Instead of selling a product, these posters distilled the emotional or philosophical essence of a film, often subverting the conventional hierarchy between artwork and the object it was meant to advertise—as if the films existed solely to justify the creation of the posters.

Many artists associated with the Polish School—Henryk Tomaszewski, Jan Lenica, Roman Cieślewicz, Wojciech Zamecznik, and Waldemar Świerzy, to name a few—came from painting or illustration rather than formal graphic design training. In fact, their disregard for commercial norms became a strength: the posters they created were unique, inventive, and unrepeatable. This background outside of traditional design informed a broader conceptual understanding of print as a transformative act, a medium not merely for dissemination but for interpretation and provocation.

In AFTERimage, Jasper picks up this lineage, not to mimic its aesthetic but to reanimate its logic under contemporary conditions. He questions whether the poster—so often dismissed today as an anachronism—might still hold relevance as a compressed, symbolic vehicle of meaning. In an age overwhelmed by digital media and the incessant velocity of information, the poster’s concise, deliberate visual language gains new resonance. Jasper treats print not as a nostalgic artifact, but as a vital counterpoint to the ephemerality of the screen—a site of material presence and imaginative potential.