Museum Lapidarium – inter-museum collaboration
Istria as the Tree of Life
at Museum of Moslavina Kutina
5 / 10 – 5 / 11 / 2023
The exhibition, named after the work of the renowned Slovenian artist Marko Pogačnik, displays a selection of works from the museum’s collection that are thematically related to Istria in various ways. Marko Pogačnik, who has embraced a holistic approach to landscape, art, and living from his earliest beginnings, stated that Istria has been referred to as “terra magica, terra incognita” since the antiquity. Even those who do not pay attention to various “esoteric hallucinations” can confirm that when they pass through the Učka tunnel into the microcosm of Istria, something changes, and they are taken over by a sense of stepping into a special space. There are many reasons for this within Istria itself, and this exhibition is one of them.
Regardless of the fact that the Novigrad Museum is specific because it was built to host early medieval cultural monuments – the Lapidary Collection – a part of its collection also includes a collection of contemporary art. The works in the collection were donated, purchased, produced, or specifically created for the exhibitions at the Rigo Gallery, and today, there are 655 units of registered museum material. This small gallery in Novigrad, located at Velika ulica 5, has been part of the museum since 2016. However, it began its activities and started building its collection in 1995. Contemporary artists who have developed their identities over the past decades, achieved recognized status, and some of them have notable European and worldwide references, occupy a central place in it.
The exhibition aims to showcase works of various poetics, codes, and expressions, but by following the Istrian narrative of the Rigo Collection, it also provides a panoramic view of contemporary Croatian and European art from the late second half of the last century onwards.
Artists featured in the exhibition : Đanino Božić, Marčelo Brajnović, Marija Braut, Karlheinz Cibulka, Matija Debeljuh, Ivars Drulle, Roberto Ghezzi, Igor Grubić, Tina Gverović, Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller, Marko Košnik, Ivan Kožarić, Denis Krašković, Antal Lux, Dalibor Martinis, Oleg Morović, Marko Pogačnik, Silvia Potočki aka SofiaSilvia, Linus Riepler, Ana Sladetić, Damir Stojnić, Miran Šabić, Šikuti Machine, Goran Škofić, Marcelo Viquez, Vlasta Žanić, Danijel Žeželj, and a selection of artists’ books and publications from Rigo Gallery.