SELECTED ARTWORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

>> Curators: Marko Košan and Jernej Kožar

The exhibition presents a selection of works from the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška – by Jože Tisnikar and Bogdan Borčić. It also includes a selection of works from the Hommage to Tisnikar collection, comprising pieces by Slovenian and international artists with a related artistic sensibility. The display is changed several times a year.

The life of Jože Tisnikar (1928–1998) ended in a tragic car accident in 1998, precisely at the time when he celebrated the greatest triumph of his artistic achievement with a major retrospective exhibition for his seventieth birthday at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Slovenj Gradec. His unique, incomparable, and indescribable artistic story of a bitter search for the profound truths of human existence remains an endless source of inspiration for the conception of new projects, focused on one of the core collections of the Museum, entitled “HOMMAGE TO TISNIKAR”, founded by the art historian and then-director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška Milena Zlatar. In memory of the great painter, the collection combines works by Slovenian and foreign artists with a similar artistic poetics. The current presentation, in addition to selected works by Tisnikar, includes paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures by Valentin Oman, Hermann Falke, Tina Dobrajc, Natalija Šeruga Golob, Vladimir Veličković, Herman Pivk, Tihomir Pinter, Metod Frlic, and Mirsad Begić.

Bogdan Borčić (1926–2014) was one of the most important painters and graphic artists of the second half of the 20th century, in Slovenia and beyond. His greatness is reflected not only in the large body of artwork he created, but above all in his extraordinary consistency, his eagerness to explore and his search for the poetic in everyday things. He was also a recipient of the Prešeren Award for Lifetime Achievement and an honorary citizen of the Municipality of Slovenj Gradec.  The collection of his works at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška began to take shape at the end of the last century through acquisitions. In 2003, the artist donated 40 paintings to the gallery, followed by an additional 10 in 2006. After his death, part of his estate was donated by his family. Today, the collection includes 321 works: 306 paintings, 10 prints, and 5 sculptures.
Borčić’s creative path is grounded in the modernist dichotomy between figuration and abstraction. Over the decades, his artistic thinking evolved between depiction and the deconstruction of the image, moving toward extreme abstraction and later returning to mimetic painting—a shift that characterizes his late period after 2003. At that time, he gradually abandoned the modernist construction of the image, first evident in the print series Preproste reči (Simple Things).
His ambivalent relationship to the image can already be observed in works from the 1960s, when he gradually moved away from mimetic representation in favor of a minimalist approach. After 2007, everyday objects began to enter his painting practice: ropes, locks, cans, rags, nets, faucets, computer parts, stones, paintbrushes, dominoes, playing cards, dice, and more. He used these items primarily as compositional elements, less often as symbols. Some of these objects also became fully three-dimensional, transformed into standalone sculptures—such as a paintbrush suspended in a plexiglass box.