SELECTED ARTWORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION: ON THE EDGE

>> On display from 8 June to 12 September 2021.

>> Curators: Katarina Hergold Germ and Andreja Hribernik

Artists: Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar in Sašo Sedlaček, Alija Hafizović – Haf, Zuzanna Janin, Valentin Oman, Uroš Potočnik, Marija Mojca Pungerčar, Jože Suhadolnik, Đorđe Balmazović (ŠKART)​, Joco Žnidaršič

The foundation for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška’s collection was formed by works donated by artists who participated in international exhibitions with a distinctly humanistic character under the auspices of the UN mostly between 1967 and 1975. The Museum in Slovenj Gradec was fundamentally conceived as a space that would permanently advocate for the ideas of peace, solidarity and humanism through art. In the context of this past, the collection is still being built today, encompassing many artists who engage with current social topics and highlight the problems of the contemporary world.

In the current selection, we present artists who foreground the topics of war and migration, social inequality, hyperproduction and exploitation of the workforce, and finally, who speak about their consequences, resulting in ever increasing poverty, exclusion and suffering of a large share of the population.

For his series Piran, created at the start of the war in the region of Yugoslavia in the nineties, Valentin Oman stated that an artist cannot remain apathetic at these events and cannot create art only for the sake of art itself. The present exhibition thus also indirectly highlights the artists’ responsibility, as well as the responsibility of us, galleries and museums, as those who can and should discuss topics that are otherwise often overlooked or marginalized.