23 December, 2020
Maribor

Together with the Maribor architect and artist Luka Murovec, we are preparing the exhibition “Pohorje Pearls”. The exhibition, a spatial installation, will explore the relationship between Maribor and Pohorje, which so strongly marks it. The exhibition will be on view in December, with the opening date depending on the epidemiological picture.

The project “Pohorje Pearls”, which will be prepared by Luka Murovec in the Epeka Gallery, builds on the author’s previous experience in composing ambient installations, which represent the starting point for consideration of what is a common and what a private space and how to combine in the existing socio-political structure individual and collectivist tendencies and to find a belt between them that enables both individual freedom as well as careful and sustainable “exploitation” of natural and spatial givens that are common in both legal and ethical terms. In the planned project, Murovec takes as a starting point the relationship between the urban and the natural, which in the specific context of Maribor is clearly reflected in the attitude and often the emotions of the inhabitants to the most distinctive city hill, Pohorje. In urban policies and individual perceptions and strategies of several economic sectors, this represents the intersection of a wide range of interests, ranging from economic exploitation and de facto privatization to almost intimate coexistence with nature in the immediate vicinity of the city and related conservative initiatives. Murovec’s perception of Pohorje and other less truncated locations near Maribor is further highlighted by the fact that he has lived in Berlin for the last 10 years, making Pohorje a neuralgic point of nostalgia and homesickness, as well as a starting point for a spatial installation. cities torn between the development of new sources of income and the preservation of characteristics that make a significant contribution to the quality of life of the population.

The exhibition is set as a spatial installation that will establish a space in space in the Epeka Gallery, which with architecture, light, sound and smell will open questions about the relationship between natural and urban and the tension that is established in the space between the two poles. Murovec explores intermediate spaces, which are places of transit, passage and change. In their indeterminacy, they can reveal experiences of all kinds and allow opposites to be caught illusory. They can be a deep conclusion in the relationship between city life and nature. Sometimes these are functional spaces and as such places of unusual emptiness – perseverance, longevity. They talk about something else, about what seems clear and unambiguous, but they raise questions, cover up and cover up.

The artistic perspectives in the exhibition open up interpretations of the intermediate and at the same time call into question their opposite: places that are supposed to be concrete. Thus it is revealed that ambiguity is arbitrarily created by coexistence – in politics, culture and society – which derives from the power of consensus, from the agreement of many. At the same time, however, it always creates its own counterpart: gray areas of indefinable intermediateness.

The exhibition will present the spatial and cultural connection between the Pohorje hills and the city of Maribor. Through the spectrum of intermediateness of this long-lasting relationship, the exhibition will seek to design a concrete public space for rest and contemplation. Set as a lyrical installation amidst the urban hustle and bustle of the renovated Koroška cesta, the installation will focus on the interspace of nature and the city, creating an attractive spatial experience and opening a non-sacral space of modern holiness with a combination of technology, interior design, architecture, light, sound and smell. thus becoming a holistic work of art that sucks the viewer in and thus addresses him directly.

More about the project and digital materials.

The project is supported by the Municipality of Maribor.