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Indepth Arts News:
"Hugo Boss Prize 2000 - Marjetica Potrec - Kagiso: Skeleton House Features Two Architectural Installations, Photographs, and Text"
2001-02-09 until 2001-04-29
Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY,
USA
Kagiso: Skeleton House, an exhibition of the work of
Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc, the winner of the HUGO
BOSS PRIZE 2000, will be presented at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum from February 9 through April 29,
2001. The HUGO BOSS PRIZE, a biannual international
award administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, was established in 1996 to recognize
significant achievement in contemporary art. Potrc was
selected from a group of seven short-listed artists by an
international jury of curators and museum directors.
With this first exhibition in a major American museum,
Potrc's highly original and culturally relevant work will be
brought to a much broader audience.
We are delighted to present the work of Marjetica Potrc
as the winner of the HUGO BOSS PRIZE: 2000, said
Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation. Her textual and sculptural investigations
into the notion of shelter and the contemporary city are
particularly trenchant today.
Contemporary art today has many faces, said Werner
Baldessarini Chairman and CEO, Hugo Boss AG. It isn't
governed by conventional norms, and often creates
compelling new trends and perspectives. We are
extremely pleased to honor Marjetica Potrc, whose work
embodies the spirit of exploration and ingenuity that
this award seeks to recognize.
The exhibition has been organized by Susan Cross,
Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Potrc's work focuses on contemporary urban conditions,
exploring both the regulated and organic results of the
basic human need for shelter, said Cross. For the
exhibition mounted in the Guggenheim's Tower 4
gallery, Potrc will install two architectural structures that
illustrate the confluence of the planned and unplanned
city. Skeleton House is based on a subsidized housing
model in South Africa in which the floor, roof, and
plumbing system is provided while the individual owner
is responsible for creating the walls and interior spaces.
In her installation, Cross notes, Potrc demonstrates
how the spirit of the universal, colloquial building style
of the shanty, or favela - or what she calls individual
initiatives - has been recognized by regulatory bodies
as a positive paradigm for viable and affordable
housing solutions.
She approaches the city as a living
organism—vulnerable, yet vital in its constant
reinvention of itself according to the necessities of
everyday existence, noted Nancy Spector, Curator of
Contemporary Art, Guggenheim Museum, and a juror for
the HUGO BOSS PRIZE: 2000. Finding an energy and a
certain poetry in the architecture of the disenfranchised,
Potrc creates an anti-monumental art that rethinks the
concepts of publicity and privacy.
IMAGE:
Marjetica Potrc
East Wahdat: Upgrading Program, 1999.
Building material, dimensions variable;
installation view,
Museum Moderner Kunst
Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 1999,
335.3 x 243.8 x 152.4 cm.
Collection of Allen Memorial Art Museum,
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
Oberlin Friends of Art Fund and
Ruth Roush Fund for Contemporary Art, 2000.
Photo by Matija Pavlovec.
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