U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts

The U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts was established in 1994 by the Museum of Modern Art with the aim to provide a periodic overview of the current situation in contemporary Slovene art through the subjective eye of a curator/selector, drawing attention to works which are, according to the selector, the best and closest to the sensibility of the time. To assure a certain level of objectivity, the selector of every second Triennial is a foreign curator, since this emphasizes the purpose of the event: to underline differences in aesthetic concepts as well as in professional, critical, cultural, political and social positions.

About editions

The curator of the first U3 was Slovene the art historian and critic Tomaž Brejc. The second triennial of 1997 was curated by Peter Weibel, a multimedia curator and writer active at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe. Themes were dislocation, discommunication, medialisation, contextualisation, and a critique of the museum institution and art system. The third triennial of 2000 entitled 'Vulgata', was conceived by Slovene gallerist and curator Gregor Podnar (see ŠKUC Gallery and Gregor Podnar Gallery), and featured the Slovene national identity based on social constructs. Among others it exhibited works of Marko Peljhan, Tadej Pogačar, Alenka Pirman, Vuk Čosić, Marko Kovačič, Damijan Kracina, Darij Kreuh, and Maja Licul.

The 4th Triennial of 2003 was curated by Christine Van Assche, a new media curator from the Musée national d'art moderne at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. It concentrated on the concept of the museum; based on the supposition museums have been changed tremendously over the last fifty years. The shifting concept of the museums were presented in 20 projects: prints were exhibited on billboards throughout Ljubljana (Sašo Vrabič), a video was broadcast on TV (Davide Grassi, Igor Stromajer and Brane Zorman), the exhibition was including projections on the façade of the museum (Martin Bricelj), a music performance in a theatre (Random Logic), a project on the Internet (Andreja Kulunčič), and a project involving visitors' cell phones (Vuk Čosić). Further artists were also Bojan Brecelj, Tomaž Gregorič, Dejan Habicht and Tanja Lažetić, Janez Janša (formerly and nowadays again known as Žiga Kariž), Borut Peterlin, Franc Purg, Tobias Putrih, Son:DA and Tao Grega Sambolec Vrhovec. The triennial was featured under the title Here and There.

The 2006 U3 curator was Jurij Krpan, artistic director of Ljubljana Kapelica Gallery. Into 4 modules divided presentation showed in the first one only the presentations of works comprehended as good practices to draw attention to the unexploited possibilities for improving production capacities in the field of visual practices. Within the second module was featured the exhibition of 11 selected intermedia art projects as Viktor Bernik, BridA, Srečo Dragan, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak in collaboration with Stefan Doepner, Mark Požlep, Sašo Sedlaček and others. The third module, featured in the central room of the triennial dealt with the analysis of the 20th-century production and public presentations. In the time situated the fourth module consisted of panel discussions, talks and performances. Several representatives of international art institutions, centres, organisations and networks presented their artist-in-residence programmes.

Under the reason of renovations of the Museum of Modern Art the 6th U3 is postponed in June 2010 and entitled Idea for Living [Kako živeti]. It is curated by Charles Esche, actual director of the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and curator and co-curator of many international exhibitions around the world including biennials as the 2nd RIWAQ Biennial (Ramallah, Palestine; 2007 and 2009), the 9th International Istanbul Biennial of 2005, and the Gwangju Biennale (Republic of Korea; 2002).

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U3 Triennial of Contemporary Slovene Arts

About editions

See also

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