Matej Andraz Vogrinčič is a Slovenian artist. He has been creating site-specific work in urban and natural environments since the early 1990s. He has built an international reputation by creating installations specific to local places, traditions, and histories – filling the most ordinary or neglected places with even more ordinary objects. With all his work, Vogrinčič starts with the space but always leaves room to alter and develop the idea in the process. His projects rely on a direct connection with the local community, including clothing and toy car donations. Vogrinčič first “dressed” a dilapidated house with donated clothing in his hometown and then presented a similar project at the Venice Biennale in 1999. He created the project “Car Park: Members Only” – a wall installation consisting of 15,000 toy cars placed on a wall of a building in Adelaide, Australia in response to the city’s traffic and parking problems and continued to the Australian outback, where he put up a watering can installation, consisting of some 2,000 plaster watering cans arranged over the area of a football field in a region largely devoid of rain. As part of the 2003 Awesome Festival in Perth, Western Australia, he filled up an area of 7,000 square meters with 10,000 balloons of red, orange, blue, pink, green and yellow colors. He filled the atrium of the former Melbourne GPO with 1000 umbrellas in 2005. One of his recent projects include Untitled commissioned for the 4th Liverpool Biennial in England, an installation of 56 upturned boats placed inside the bombed ruins of the Gothic Era St. Luke’s Church. In 2013, Vogrinčič was selected to be part of 'KASHIMA' international artist-in-residence run by the npo BEPPU PROJECT in Beppu, Japan. During the residence he experimented a work in collaboration with Japanese bamboo craft masters and he created the site-specific artwork, 'Rope', in an abandoned hot-spring. He is invited as an artist for a contemporary art triennial called the Beppu Contemporary Art Festival 'Mixed Bathing World' 2015 in Beppu, Japan.
2013 , Beppu, Japan Selected artist for 'KASHIMA' international artist-in-residence program 2007 , Krasnoyarsk, Russia Commissioned by the Biennial of Siberia 2007 Farmington Canal New Haven, CT United States Commissioned by Site Projects 2006 St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool, United Kingdom Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial 2005 GPO Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Commissioned by L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival and GPO 2004 Ljubljana, Slovenia Commissioned by Microsoft 2003 Beach Balls Perth, Australia Commissioned by the Awesome Festival 2002 Coober Pedy, Australia
Commissioned by Scape: Arts & Industry Urban Arts Festival 2000 Adelaide, Australia 1999 Venice, Italy 1997 Street Wear Ljubljana, Slovenia 1993 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2003 Moon Plain, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia 2002 Moon Plain, SOFA Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand 1999 Clothes Sculpture, John Gibson Gallery, New York, USA 1996 Dressing, Anonimus Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia 1992 Ready Made, , Ljubljana, Slovenia
Selected Group Exhibitions
2005Slovene Art 1995–2005: Territories, Identities, Nets, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia The First Line, 26th Biennale of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia 2004 Slovene Art 1985–1995, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia 2002 Art+Industry Biennial, Christchurch, New Zealand Tancat per Obres Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain 1997 U3, Triennial of Slovene Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia This Art is Recycled, , Ljubljana, Slovenia 1996 Urbanaria, SCCA Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Art interventions, performances, films, theatre design
1998 Le Coco Fruitwear Co, commissioned by Biennale of Young European and Mediterranean Artists, Turin, Italy Activities of Le Coco Fruitwear Co. continue with new collections and new shows at: K4 Club, Ljubljana, Slovenia Kibla Club, Maribor, Slovenia Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1998Set designs for Marina Grzinic and Aina Šmid’s video Madame Butterfly Theater, Mladinsko, Ljubljana 1995 , a manufactory for fruit clothes, Ljubljana Markets, Slovenia 1994 The House, short film with Damjan Kozole, Ljubljana, Slovenia 1994 House Tailor, documentary film with Tibor Ogrizek, Ljubljana, Slovenia 1994 Paints garments and makes fashion accessories for Hej Salvador, a music-fashion performance, Ljubljana, Slovenia
