exhibition

So Franz Ferdinand's actually a band of communists cloaked in tight trousers and skinny ties? Apparently, if you look closely at the Cold War-era propaganda posters from UPenn's Burrison Art Gallery, one of which was clearly Photoshopped for the Scots' You Could Have It So Much Better record sleeve. This fire's out of control, indeed, and it's much more complicated than a casual glance would suggest. Liliana Milkova's "Future in the Past" focuses on 30 pieces printed to produce optimism among the lower class in the formative years following the 1917 October Revolution, when the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was approaching the gray area of communist rule and a Soviet Union. Brimming with black, red, white and blue color schemes and images of peasantry, the posters were actually utilized as propaganda by the government in two entirely different but ultimately similar eras sorely needing an air of nationalism—the second being the '50s and '60s, during the Cold War/space race rule of Nikita Khrushchev. Think of it this way: Pretend American subways and buses were plastered with a massive poster campaign celebrating big business and Republican rule during the Reagan era. Now imagine them reprinted two decades later to justify the same ideals under the tax-break-happy Bush administration. The parallels are uncanny and, frankly, quite frightening.

"On one important level, 'Future in the Past' illustrates how a political state seeks to deliberately construct a national consciousness during a period of change and perceived threat," explains Kelly Writers House curator Peter Schwarz, "in order to alter people's conception of their relationship to that state."

"Future in the Past: Early Soviet Propaganda in the Cold War," opening reception, Wed., Jan. 18, 6-8 p.m., exhibition through Feb. 18, Kelly Writers House Art Gallery, 3805 Locust Walk, 215-573-9748.