Quarter to Two
Artist: Tadej Pogačar
In 1994, the Museum of Modern Art invited Tadej Pogačar and his institution P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. museum to intervene at the exhibition of works that had been recently included in the gallery’s collection. With his work, entitled Fifteen to Two, Pogačar intervened in the exhibition by changing the gallery space into a waiting room. Above the main entrance into the room he hung a non-operating clock, set to fifteen minutes to two – the time when employees were already getting ready to leave their work posts for home. The exits leading into other exhibition spaces were marked with signs of the four directions, but not in the right order, and there were two rows of chairs in the middle of the space.
With minimal means and the formal gap between this work that has never found its way into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and the exhibited ones that had become part of this collection, the artistic intervention appealed to the idea of waiting of the artist and the artworks for the competent institutions who have the authority to recognise, historicize, elevate or dump works of art.
Reformulation of the artwork Fifteen to Two in 2011 does not mean the trendy re-enactment, but stripping, a radicalization of the position of production of knowledge. Pogačar enters the institution as a place of exposure, a space where classification and allocation are carried out, where there are mechanisms of the institution at work: its order, its filters, codes and collections, enabling the construction of the history.
Curators: Ana Grobler, Iva Kovač, Yasmín Martín Vodopivec, Špela Pavli, Lara Plavčak, Vladimir Vidmar, Asta Vrečko, Mojca Založnik
The final exhibition of the 13th edition of The World of Art, School for Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing, (2010/2011)
Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
13 April 2011 – 6 May 2011
Production: SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana / World of Art
Co-production: KUD Mreža / Alkatraz Gallery
Support: Municipality of Ljubljana City, Ministry of Culture of the RS
Photos: Sunčan Stone. SCCA Archive.