#milenko matanovic

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Remember OHO?

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milenko matanovic

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MILENKO MATANOVIĆ (OHO Group, Slovenia) Above:[Wire, 1969]. Middle: [Earth from the Moon & Rope, 1969]; [Object made of Wood & Rope, 1969]; Elephant, 1969]. Below: [Wire, 1969]  

‘My art was improvisational. I think I was engaged in playful explorations, not in theories. In fact I resisted theory and instead simply trusted my intuition and impulse.[...]I had a keen sense that our collective human pursuits were perilous to nature. ... Though I used recycled materials in my art, increasingly I had a sense that I needed to go deeper and try to better understand ecology. But mainly we felt that the path open to us through art exhibits in museums and art galleries was too narrow and that it led to an increasingly specialized activity that would, over time, narrow rather than expand our pursuits.’ 

--Milenko Matanovic--

Milenko Matanovic is an artist, author and community organizer with an international reputation and a professional career of over 40 years, founding the well-known non-profit organization Pomegranate Center, whose mission has been to develop an effective model for helping communities prepare for the future using collective creativity, meaningful engagement and powerful collaboration.

Matanovic began his career as an experimental artist in the late ’60s in his native Slovenia, exhibiting all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the artist collective OHO. He was engaged in film making, happenings, music and involved in visual arts, initially creating paintings and objects for which he partly used industrial materials such as foam rubber or used egg cases. Later on he produced "poor" objects and installations made of hemp, wood, foam rubber, scrap iron and the like. At the age of 24, feeling like his art career was no longer helping to push art-making into everyday life – it was living in museums and private collections – Matanovic left the artist collective and began learning how art could serve community better. He now lives in Issaquah, Washington DC.

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MILENKO MATANOVIĆ Above:[The Constellation Of Candles In The Field Corresponds To The Constellation Of The Stars In The Sky, 1970]. Middle: [Diagram Relation Sun – Zarica valley- The Star Venus, 1970]; [Relation Sun/Green Pasepartout, 1970]; Project The Constellation of Candles KATALOG, 1970]. Below: [Photograph Relation Sun, 1970] 

‘I wanted to do something that would capture the mystery or Zarica. I did a series of experiments with candles there. I brought a drawing of major star constellations to Zarica and then aligned the candles with the stars above. It was beautiful while it lasted. My candles burned out in about one hour.’

–Milenko Matanović—

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Milenko Matanovic disappeared from the traditional art world of his native Slovenia 25 years ago to "explore the white space of possibility". From that exploration emerged a vision of an abundant future he’s been manifesting through public art projects with communities since 1986 when he established the Pomegranate Center.