MARJETICA POTRČ: Next Stop, Kiosk

29.10.2003

Press conference: 29.10.2003, at 1 p.m. Opening view: 29.10.2003 , at 8 p.m. You are kindly invited to the press conference and the opening view of Marjetica Potrč's solo exhibition Next Stop, Kiosk. Marjetica Potrč is a renowned artist and architect. In 2000 she received the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize and exhibited her work in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Since then she has participated in numerous important exhibitions worldwide; among the more recent ones are this year's Istanbul Biennial and Venice Biennial, a show in Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the In den Schluchten des Balkan show in Fridericianum in Kassel, and solo exhibitions in IVAM - Institut Valencia d'art Modern v Valencii, the Kunstverein in Salzburg and the Kunsthalle in Bern. Marjetica Potrč is interested in the city as a complicated and multilayered space and social organism. Her works originate in the experience of contemporary cities, whose centers are changing into mere images, while the real life of the urban organism develops on the periphery and in intermediary spaces. On the one hand, Potrč is interested in urban voids, gaps in crowded urban structures, neglected empty areas, and the ways towns shrink and disappear; on the other, she has been focusing lately on the phenomenon of quickly growing cities (e.g. cities in East Asia). This year she was part of the Caracas Case Project team, who spent six months exploring unregulated and rapidly growing urban structures in Caracas, Venezuela. Her thesis is that the two currently most successful urban forms, i.e. the gated community and the shantytown, have in common the emphasis they place on privacy and security (a good example of this is post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa). In museums and galleries Potrč often presents buildings (and calls them case studies) which are based on specific examples taken from contemporary cities (e.g. the works of Rural Studio in Alabama, USA, Barefoot College in India, and Leidsche Rijn in Utrecht, the Netherlands). Most of her case studies underscore her most burning interests; currently, this is the role of individual initiative and self-sustainability in solving the problems of energy, communication and utility infrastructure in the global city. The basic element of her exhibition at the Moderna galerija is a kiosk, K-67, originally designed by a prominent Slovenian designer and architect Saša J. M?tig and included in the New York MoMA collection of architecture and design in 1971. M?tig developed the System K-67 in the 1960s as a universal prefabricated system. In what was then socialist Yugoslavia, it represented a good example of modernist design and at the same time one of the first comprehensive solutions in urban design. The kiosks, which are still in use in the streets throughout Slovenia, reflect M?tig's vision of a unified design for all street furniture. What Marjetica Potrč is interested in, on the other hand, is the kiosk as a mobile unit (and potentially a shelter), its nature of a multiple, its ability to be composed, developed further, and used creatively. The Moderna galerija installation presents an unusual structure: the ground floor is composed of a group of kiosks, while above these there rises a house made from pine logs and discarded printing plates. The two constructions belong to very different social and geographical environments. Whereas the kiosks present an example of very well-thought-out urban design, the house on stilts, which recalls a South American palafita, is an example of creativity under conditions where the best chance for survival is, essentially, self-organization. By including the kiosks, Marjetica presents this project as an urban case study and, at the same time, links the exhibition to the local context (the installation also refers to the illegal rooftop houses of Belgrade, a consequence of the influx of people displaced because of the Balkan wars). Marjetica Potrč likes to share her case studies with visitors to museums and galleries, and with this latest hybrid, she offers us a kind of "breathing space," where we are invited not only to ponder a new approach to planning and creativity but also to reconsider the transitory and mobile character of today's urban spaces, the importance of communication, and the contemporary city's relationship to the values and legacies of modernism. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, co-published by Moderna galerija Ljubljana and Revolver - Archiv f?uelle Kunst, which presents an overview of the artist's work over the past five years and includes essays by the curator of the exhibition, Zdenka Badovinac, Goran Tomčić, writings of Marjetica Potrč and her interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and is edited by Livia Paldi.. The exhibition has been sponsored by: Delo prodaja, Feliks kartice, Gama center, Imgrad, Kontiki solar, Mestna občina Ljubljana, Ministrstvo za kulturo Republike Slovenije.