MG: Marko Pogačnik. The art of life - the life of art

5 June - 4 December 2012
Moderna galerija, Cankarjeva 15

Moderna galerija is presenting a comprehensive overview of Pogačnik's fifty years of endeavors to redefine the relation between art and society.

Curator: Igor Španjol

The exhibition is structured around the various ways Marko Pogačnik has discovered over the past 50 years for incorporating the creative potential of art into diverse life processes. It starts with his work as a member of the OHO movement and group (1965-71). The next stage was the founding of the Šempas Family, an agricultural and artistic commune that also functioned as a spiritual center. Currently this trend continues in collaboration with the group VITAAA and the LifeNet groups in installing Geopuncture Circles worldwide. Special attention is given to Pogačnik's involvement in political processes, such as his protest against the war in Vietnam (1968) and his contribution to Slovenia's independence when he designed the Slovenian coat of arms.
The "art of life" subject comes to the fore in the domain of ecology, in the artist's approaches to working together with the natural world, either as the acupuncture of the Earth (lithopuncture) or his geomantic interpretations of individual places and regions.

The "life of art" topic sheds light on the various possible uses of the language of art in communicating with nature's consciousness and in raising human awareness, both in relation to the multidimensionality of life and space. Together with his wife Marika, the artist constructs large-scale installations out of natural materials, which enable visitors to experience the invisible dimensions of space at first hand. Thus a walk-through model of a nine-dimensional space of the earthly universe has been put up in the central exhibition room.

The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport. To accompany the exhibition, a catalogue with texts by Tomaž Brejc, Christian Höller, Marko Pogačnik, Miško Šuvaković and the exhibition curator Igor Španjol will be published.