Avgust Černigoj, Eduard Stepančič, Giorgio Carmelich '& Josip Vlah, 1927
“When I started working for Moderna galerija, my first job was a presentation of the historical Slovene avant-garde; that was in 2011. Prior to that, i.e. before 2011, the Slovene historical avant-garde had never been included in the permanent collection display in such extent. (The 1998 watershed exhibition Tank! is a separate matter.) The jewel in our crown is of course the so-called Trieste Constructivist Space. I vividly remember the process of its reconstruction, which would not have been possible without Dragan Živadinov and Miha Turšič. Especially our trip to Trieste stands out in my mind. A lot has been said and written about the Space and its provisional name. Personally, I’m increasingly inclined to think it should be renamed as Abstract Construction or simply Construction – this follows from the Group of constructivists’ manifesto and Černigoj’s words in the second issue of tank magazine, where he also write of ‘the manifestation of constructivists’. It is not a space. In both texts, Černigoj uses the word space geographically rather than artistically, in terms of Trieste as a particular locality and milieu. Simply put, it is about motion and momentariness as object, rather than an object – or a space – that is motion and in-motion, as indicated by floating or semi-floating objects in space. Everything previous and earthly is negated, also the perception of time – of everything. Picture this: you are in Moderna galerija and an object starts rising off its base of its own accord − suddenly it is hovering in the air before you. This is it. That’s the moment our constructivists created.”
The curator Marko Jenko, PhD, has chosen to present the reconstruction of the Trieste Constructivist Space (1927 / 2011).
