Covering the gallery floor with white canvas, he built on this a ramified abstract composition out of over half a million used matches produced under the trademark of the factory, which had moved its production out of this complex quite some time ago. With such a large number of matches, the installation not only reminds us of how little remains of the production of what used to be one of the biggest factories in the city, but, through their materiality now devoid of their original purpose, alludes to transience and fragility – the two constants of the modern way of life, which are maintained in the collective consciousness by artists and museum professionals, recreating the stories of the past with their great sense of space and time.

Artist Matej Andraž Vogrinčič is best known to the general public as “the guy who dressed that house down by the Ljubljanica River,” and also for setting up a forest in Ljubljana’s Zvezda Park and a bakery in the Škuc Gallery, where he baked bread and rolls with a little help from professional bakers. Conceptually bold, Vogrinčič’s works and interventions are often installations that take a long time to realize, but are then limited in time, even short-lived, surviving only in photographs. Their production requires time for careful, prolonged consideration of all angles and a lot of patience for the execution. 

And while the main premise of all Vogrinčič’s interventions is the multiplication of some fundamental, carefully selected basic element, he never repeats his works; they are always temporary and removed or destroyed at the end of the project; with only images remaining as documentation and artworks. Rather than in galleries, the artist usually realizes his ideas in urban environments, where his interventions call attention to the neuralgic points in cities, such as decaying buildings and facades, abandoned construction sites, or shopping malls as monolithic temples of consumerist society. His critique is not explicit or direct, but playfully points out the contentious areas uncovered in the process of researching the place, its environment, and historical and social contexts, in the preparation stages of his painstakingly executed installations that directly refer to the place under scrutiny and its history.