Marko Brecelj: The Lodging of the Unreconciled |
Loža Gallery Koper, 31.05.─15.09.2024, Opening: Friday, 31. 5. 2024, at 7 p.m. |
Curated by: Vasja Cenčič, Bine Skrt, Arijana M. Brecelj, Coordination: Tatjana Sirk
Piran Coastal galleries in collaboration with the Society of Friends of Moderate Progress and the Koper Regional Museum.
Setting up of the “Merry Decluttering" of Marko Brecelj at the Vžigalica Gallery, Ljubljana, 2022 (Photo: DPZN)
Koper, 28.10.2002 “Well go Home!"
Performance at the docking of the NATO aircraft carrier George Washington in the port of Koper
Photo: Zdravko Primožič /FPA
A variant of a temporary installation from the infancy of museological originality, from the collections of the Marko Brecelj Museum Under Construction. A continuation of his last monumental performance Endgame. Adaptations to specific mental and physical spaces resurrect a tiny particle of the tail left behind by his blazing comet.
From the psychological point of view, we experience the second law of thermodynamics as a frustration. Here and now, disintegration is crowned in a fittingly anointed Loggia Gallery. In the only surviving Gothic town hall in the country. A patina lies dormant on the fragile products of Brecelj’s intellect. The beloved (or hated) person, the unfortunate animal, the artist is not represented here simply by relics, props from “soft terrorist” actions (the public protests he designed and staged), video documents, sound recordings, museum pieces and unmuseumlike mould. The point of the exhibition is achieved above all if the exhibits allow us to discern the particular state of his spirit. Ideally, we would be able to internalise Marko Brecelj (1951–2022) as a mental tool. As a user’s manual for life.
Marko Brecelj, an authentic workaholic, lived the way that people lived and worked in this part of the world after the Second World War, when they were busy building a human-friendly social system; happily and willingly; proverbially avoiding comfort and conformity; loyal to himself and to the past of a generation that distinguished itself through its enthusiasm for change and its refusal to accept the status quo.
The second key to the installation lies in the dichotomy of dislodging/lodging. Between the exhibition’s present lodging in the Loggia – which blossoms in the grace of His Worship the Mayor – and its merciless predecessor, the dislodging represented by the eviction of the Association of Friends of Moderate Progress in 2015. The space between these two poles has been characterised by entropy along the irreversible vector of time. Details are supplemented by pre- and post-Covid activity of bats, the result of their digestive processes, water damage and ignoble rot. Part of the dislodged archive has also survived a flood.
Vasja Cenčič
