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organizers: Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde, Marinko Sudac Collection, Valamar Riviera p.l.c., Poreč Open University

curators: Dorotea Fotivec

As part of the „Artist on Vacation 2019 / Valamar“ project, the Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde and the Marinko Sudac Collection in collaboration with Valamar Riviera p.l.c., as well as Poreč Open University invite you to the opening of the exhibition of the OHO group.

OHO group is a Slovenian conceptual neo-avant-garde group which was active in various phases from 1962 to 1971. It started as the Kranj Group (1962 – 65), then OHO Movement (1965 – 68), and then the OHO Group (1969 – 71). The core members of the group in that period were Marko Pogačnik, Iztok Geister Plamen and Marjan Ciglič. Over the years, several others joined - Milenko Matanović, Andraž Šalamun, Tomaž Šalamun, Naško Križnar, David Nez, Matjaž Hanžek, Vojin Kovač Chubby, Drago Dellabernardina, Aleš Kermauner, Franci Zagoričnik, and others.

The group's name arose from the blending of two Slavic words, "oko" (eye) and "uho" (ear). Supposedly it marked the need to unify the sense for the new outlook on the world. The OHO group members wanted their art to challenge the set views on the world and on art. An artwork was no longer connected to traditional media - it can be executed in any media, it is no longer limited to the art sphere, but on any aspect of everyday life, it can be expanded, it no longer relies solely on its creator, it can be an action which would result in a change of relationships or the surroundings.

At the exhibition in the Zuccato Gallery in Poreč, works from different periods of the group's work will be presented. The first phase of their work was related to the philosophy of Reism. Reism is an attempt to transcend the anthropocentric world view to a world of things, to a non-anthropocentric system in which men existed on an equal level with all that surrounds him. Each things is viewed, seen, and considered in its unique state. The second phase can be connected with Arte Povera, body-art and ambient art, performance, experimental film, land art, interventions in nature, while the third phase is characterised by transcendental conceptualism. 

The group separated amicably and consciously after the "Information" exhibition in MoMA, New York, in 1970 to allow for the next creative phase to develop. The group's members did not want to go professionally into the international system of art and institutions. Later, in 1971, when the OHO group members stopped the joint activities, Pogačnik founded the Family from Šempas - a group, commune-like, in which the artistic practice and everyday life intertwined fully, and was active until 1979.