Publication “David Maljković: With the Collection”

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka issued a publication titled With the Collection, following David Maljković’s exhibition of the same name, held at the Museum from 31 January to 13 June 2020.

Envisaged as a dialogue with objects and people, it reawakened the interest in the Museum’s past and enhanced the understanding of the Museum’s present.  With its positionings and a series of activities, the collection becomes an organism on its own, says the author. The exhibition concept thus creates space for a series of behaviors and gestures formed in dialogue with the museum’s collection.

“Being aware of the acute problem of the lack of space for exhibiting the permanent collection throughout the Museum’s history, at the same time, unburdened by the classic museum representational apparatus, David Maljković provides the collection with space so that it could advocate for itself. Maljković opts for works found in the Museum depot and reintegrates them into today’s collective consciousness – diachronically, nonhierarchically, and nonlinearly.” (Ivana Meštrov)

Following the idea of With the Collection to build a wider picture of Rijeka’s cultural scene, the publication, accompanied with photographs and designed by Niko Mihaljević, along with the detailed concept and the author’s interventions, offers a brief history of the Museum and gathers the protagonists of the local art scene from the 1990s, who played a role in Maljković’s development as an artist.  At the same time, establishing a correlation with the actual moment, the project presented some of the contemporary artists, and through different formats included the protagonists of the younger generation of artists, both local and foreign, thus gathering a large number of authors of different generations: Dora Budor, Niko Mihaljević, Nora Turato, Petra Mrša and students of the Rijeka Academy of Applied Arts, Radio Roža, Damir Čargonja Čarli, Branko Cerovac, Klas Grdić, Igor Rukavina, Žarko Violić, Theodor de Canziani – Villa Ružić Collection, WHW Akademija and Werkplaats Typografie.

Publication info:

David Maljković: With the Collection

Published by the MMSU – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka. Representing the publisher: Branka Benčić. Editors: David Maljković, Ivana Meštrov. Text: Ivana Meštrov. Design: Niko Mihaljević. 192 pages, color, illustrated with photographs. Print: Kerschoffset. Rijeka 2020.