Dominik Cymer's exhibition Dreams & Marketing is a self-critical visual statement of a well-known designer and entrepreneur concerning the questions of marketing and advertising as well as the patterns of thinking and the visions of liaisons between art and business, fantasies of success. Design and advertising operate towards specific goals. The goal of design is utility, while the goal of promotion is to create the myth of a brand and instigate desires.
In the artificial reality created by the artist in the exhibition, which resembles an advertising presentation, the client is the artist's dreams, his needs and goals. The companies and brands that are called into being implement the strategies originating from his imagination. Tapping into infographics, photographs from sessions devised specifically for this occasion, designer's sketchbooks and marketing schemes, Cymer develops a story divided into three chapters Dream Products, Startups, and Moodboard.
Dream Products is a presentation of brands and ideas that have been implemented and allegedly launched on the market. These are brands and ideas that accompanied Cymer in his childhood, such as computers for physical work manufactured by the cult company Dragon, products for telemarketing (e.g. cooler for two vodka glasses, scent-transmitting telephone Isoap).
Startups comprises visual identifications of companies that do not exist but they are said to commission branding services. These companies offer solutions that are impossible to launch on the market, while the artist and his studio work on their marketing commissions as if implementation was indeed planned but failed for some reason. Alkotak (the company that installs machines with coupons which authorise users to drink alcohol in public spaces), Celebuy (a service that offers its clients the delivery of food ordered by “celebrities”), and Trash marketing (an agency that installs advertisements on rubbish).
The artist adds: “Startups are presentations of companies that I created when I was thinking about the business of my life. Some of them might even be viable, and they might make me rich, but I don't care and I prefer to dream of them.”
In turn, Moodboard demonstrates the directions of Cymer's own development, offering an analysis of his own style of graphic design and marketing strategy.
The opening features Wilhelm Bras in concert.
Dominik Cymer (b. 1976) – graphic designer. Co-founder of the collective Będzin Beat. Author of graphic identification and design of the book-guide Indunature by Marcin Doś (published by CCA Kronika in Bytom, 2009), which sparked the alternative tourism trend in Silesia and the fashion for “Silesian design.” Cymer has been honoured with numerous awards in design and advertising competitions. Co-founder of Cyber Kids on Real. Lives and works in Warsaw.
admission free of charge!
- Exhibition
- 16 April ‒ 11 June 2016
- curator: Stanisław Ruksza
- artist: Dominik Cymer
- collaboration: Jacek Kołodziejski
- production: Cyber Kids on Real