Luka Tilinger / AlphaBetical Order

Organised by: Museum of Applied Art

The exhibition AlphaBetical Order presents Luka Tilinger’s illustrations made for the collection of children’s books bearing the same title and being published by the public enterprise Službeni glasnik [Official Gazette].

AlphaBetical Order was launched in 2015 by Goran Petrović, editor of the first three editions, who defined it as Službeni glasnik’s new collection dedicated to the world of books. Thus, in addition to having a common form (all of them are composed of thirty chapters presenting thirty letters of the alphabet), these children’s novels are also thematically related – focused on letters, spread of literacy and literacy itself. The AlphaBetical Order collection has had four books published so far, and these are: Miraculous Feats of Azbučko the First in Thirty Letters by Dejan Aleksić (2015), Avram, Bogdan, Tread the Water by Vladislava Vojnović (2016), A Novel without a Closet by Vule Žurić (2017) and Šazbuka by Rade Tanasijević (2021).

Vladislava Vojnović, new editor of the collection and the recently published Šazbuka, writes that letters are like snowflakes or papillary lines on our fingertips – the topic is the same, but its variations are endless.

And just as the writers of the AlphaBetical Order were obliged to avoid the trap of mutual repetition, which was set as a request by a common theme, so the illustrations by Luka Tilinger, once again, had to justify the space they occupied in each book.

The reader’s glance at the book requires that the text be separated from the image, so the illustration always remains somewhere “on the side” of the book – above the title, at the end of the paragraph, in the second column, or on the opposite page. However, the right space for illustration should always be right in the text around which it goes in circles.

It is important to emphasise that the illustrations which are separated from the books, stripped of context, look slightly “lost”. The exhibition AlphaBetical Order now brings together such wandering drawings and anchors them in a new order. They are brought to life in the gallery space in larger formats, with wider margins, and through glittering screens on which they are animated by the hand of Jelena Milunović. Emboldened by the special attention of the audience, these drawings re-enter the AlphaBetical Order, to the great joy of their author.

He illustrated several children’s books, such as the collection AlphaBetical Order by Službeni glasnik, as well as the special card game Overtime (Dažbog Games).

He participated in the production of the engaged animated films Our City and Our City 2. His illustrations were published in the magazine Politikin Zabavnik, exhibited several times at the Golden Pen and BookILL Fest, and at the exhibition Contemporary Serbian Illustrators of Children’s Books (Bibiana, Bratislava).

He completed his undergraduate and master’s studies at the Faculty of Applied Arts, in the class of Professor Rastko Ćirić. He teaches drawing and video game production at the Faculty of Digital Production, Educons University in Sremska Kamenica, holding the title of Assistant Professor. He is born and lives in Belgrade.