Marko Pogačnik and Miklavž Komelj: Vedno v začetku

As part of the Confronting Contemporary Visual Art, there will be a book presentation and a conversation with its authors.

Fino al 22/10/2024

During the first Confronting Contemporary Visual Art meeting in 2024/2025 season, Marko Pogačnik and Miklavž Komelj will present their book entitled Vedno v začetku (Always in the beginning). The book is a conversation between the two authors on the 80th birthday of Marko Pogačnik, winner of the Prešeren Fund Award and UNESCO Artist of Peace.

The conversation took the form of an intensive correspondence about Pogačnik’s work, but not in the chronological order, but in a spiral way; the intensity of the conversation gradually rises, with locutors addressing deeper and deeper topics.

The book is multi-layered. It contains a lot of precious information about the artist’s life, his artistic and spiritual path and about the OHO movement, but even more important are the reflections on the current problems of human existence in relation to the transformations of the Earth in the context of different spiritual traditions and, above all, Pogačnik’s inner experience. One of the main questions in the book is: what is the transformative power of art in the present time. On the first page of the book, we can read Pogačnik’s words on his legendary early sculpture (now submerged), carved in the Zarica Canyon: “Thus this certain pattern that characterises my work, among other things. I am constantly wondering where art as a global practice has got stuck and what step is to be taken for a work of art to significantly contribute to life today”.