Spekter. 70 Years of the UGM Collection

Opening: Friday, 2 February 2024, 19:00
2 February 2024–3 December 2025

Just like a work of art is a composition of multiple elements niftily combined and confronted in harmonies that their authors concocted implementing their skills and tools, so an exhibition is an art form in and of itself, and its design is subject to principles not unlike those that shape an artwork – where works of art are the constituent elements of the conglomerate of the whole. 

“Let the cobbler stick to his last. I am not an art historian, but a product designer, so as the author of the exhibition I turned in the first place to the formal elements – colours, textures and forms –, the criteria that by definition are in my professional domain. The common thread that runs through the exhibition, from the selection of artworks and their presentation, spatial interventions (wall paint, wallpaper, drapes, framing and hanging strategies), is to challenge the idea of standard.” — David Tavčar

In the year marking our 70th anniversary, the UGM | Maribor Art Gallery invites you to come see the new hanging of our collection. The new temporary display was created by the designer David Tavčar, who over the past year combed through the museum’s collection to select over 270 works of art featured in the exhibition, some iconic, some lesser known and others shown to the public for the very first time, and arranged them across seven rooms and two halls into a singular, vibrant experience.

Since its establishment in 1954, the UGM | Maribor Art Gallery had been synonymous with the palace at Strossmayerjeva ulica, a great house, however not spacious enough to simultaneously accommodate both a permanent hanging of the collection and large temporary exhibitions. For a number of years, we have tackled this challenge by setting up temporary exhibitions of the UGM Collection in ever new constellations of works and in varying manners of display, so as to offer a new perspective on our collection and the history of 20th-century art in the city, region, and Slovenia.

While ten years ago Nadja Gnamuš, the curator of the exhibition 60! Panorama, conceptualized the exhibition layout around different themes (personal, withdrawn subject, cultural landscapes, political), and four years ago we put up the 100+ Highlights from the UGM Collection in chronological order by style, Spekter, on the other hand, focuses on the formal aspects of visual arts: colour, form, material, texture, composition. In anticipation of the gallery’s expansion to new premises at Rotovški trg, we paid special attention to our first and, as of now, our only home, using design contours to highlight the palace’s most identifying and charismatic features. Under the baton of designer David Tavčar the rooms and halls of the UGM | Maribor Art Gallery have been transformed into experiments of modes of display and interpretations of historic forms of exhibition-making: from the salon and the white cube to schematic trials and original new forms.

David Tavčar is a talented young designer, most notable for his textile designs for international fashion houses and heritage companies, his interiors, and the brand under his own name. His signature in design is the relaxed and playful freehand of his drawings, a sense of humour, and an inexhaustible trove of references to the history of art, craft and design. Tavčar threads images into sequences and grids, creating identifiable patterns that conjure up a complex and autonomous whole. As an unconventional art connoisseur, he was entrusted by the UGM | Maribor Art Gallery with carte blanche to apply his point of view to the works from the UGM Collection in order to weave a rich tapestry of art associations and conversations.

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