Project Spotlight - The Big Wave

In 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art in my native city of Ljubljana in Slovenia asked me to produce a retrospective of my work. We called the show “Waves - 50 Years of Milenko Matanovic Art”. The exhibit included different waves of my art, a retrospective of pieces I created during my time with the OHO group, documentation of gathering places created in collaboration with communities, and a small number of drawings and paintings.

The rest were seven original works for the exhibit, installed in three weeks with the help of several assistants. It was lots of fun getting back to my roots, where I did not bring art into galleries and museums and instead created original, space-specific installations. 

2018, The Big Wave (plywood ribbons and tension cables)

Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The Big Wave is an example of my fascination with tensions. It was 40 ft. long and 12 ft wide, constructed with thin plywood ribbons held in tension by cables controlling the height of each wave. Lights created intricate patterns on the undersides of the waves, similar to the designs we would see underwater. 

In 1969 I created a similar one-day installation in the public park (you can see how long I've been intrigued by waves), created with strings suspended from trees and rolls of paper stretched over the rope. This was one of many spontaneous projects I made in the same public park, installed in a few minutes, displayed for a few hours, and then taken down. I had been rejected by the Academy for Visual Arts but decided to become an artist nonetheless.

The installations were my statement that others do not determine who I am.