Welcome to the page where I present some aspects of my art work, first of all the Third Art Manifesto representing the guidelines of my work and then a selection of photos from different installations that we have installed together with my wife Marika in different art museums. Photographs are by my dear friend Bojan Brecelj.

Please look also at “Projects” where some works in the natural and urban landscapes are presented – some of Lithopuncure projects done in collaboration with Marika and the Geopuncture installations done in collaboration with the LifeNet Art Group.

My artwork starts in 1962 with an exhibition featuring ready made objects in my home town of Kranj. The next step was creating the OHO movement together with the poet Iztok Geister in 1965. In the following years the OHO group has created forms of art that were later labelled as conceptual art, performance, land art etc. The basic inspiration was (and still is in my art) to transform the anthropocentric matrix of the present civilization into a matrix that exists beyond duality: “While looking at the tree, be aware that the tree is looking at you in its own way.”

In 1971 we decided to transform OHO group into a rural and artistic community (“Šempas family”) to practically create a model of a civilisation based upon ecological righteousness and creative interaction with all aspects of life and culture. Work of the community was presented on Venice Biennale 1978.

After 1980 the “Šempas family” dissolved and I started with the idea of art as an ecological healing form developing lithoupuncture (acupuncture of the Earth) together with carved glyphs called cosmograms. After 2000 my art work develops in several directions:

• Art installations created in cooperation with natural materials.

• Body exercises and rituals called Gaia Touch

• Geopuncture installations as a collective art form.

• Writing manifestos with charcoal upon walls.

• Earth healing workshops in rural and natural landscapes etc.

Please look also at the selection of my books always complemented with drawings.

Šempas, February 15^th 2023, Marko Pogačnik

Šempas family, 1973

Landscape sculpture created 1983

»Installation of Four Seasons« called »Solstice«

A work of Marko Pogačnik, on the territory of the Bio-Technical Faculty in Ljubljana

According to recycling principle the sculpture was originally made of 100 outworn railway slides. Supported by the Bio-Technical Faculty in the year 2024 the sculpture was to large extent renewed using biologically impregnated oak beams.

The tree in the middle grew by itself as a gift of Gaia the Earth Goddess.

The Installation invites you to enter and to walk through the year’s cycle with the emphasis on the summer and winter solstices.

The vertical beams carry copper belts with signs that tell the story how life appeared upon Earth. It begins with geometrical patterns as symbols of atomic powers. They are followed by the Four elements (Water, Fire, Earth, Air) as creators of vital currents. As next plants appear, being the first embodiment of life. They are followed by insects and other species as representatives of animal world. The next one is you, while walking through the cycle of the year.

THIRD ART MANIFESTO

1
Third Art both does not exist yet and has existed as long as art exists. Third Art is not self-sufficient. While it is an integral part of all possible realms of being and non-being it should not lose itself as art. Third Art is interested in the destiny of life upon the Earth and in the universe.

2
“First Art” is the art of serving a given culture and its dominant patterns of civilization and religion. (Classical art)
“Second Art” is the art expressed as art – art that focuses on its own essence and follows its own purpose; its foundation and justification is art itself.  (Modern art)
»Third Art« is the art of co-creating the space of reality plus looking into the unknown.

3
Creating an art work upon the Earth means that the creative process evolves within the Gaia consciousness and embraced by the elemental powers of Gaia.
Gaia is the creator of life forms visible and invisible. It is Gaia that teaches the art of living, creating, and transforming in the conditions of matter.

4
The possibility of embodying an artwork or any other work in a more or less material form is the gift of Gaia. Together with its elemental and sub-elemental beings, Gaia the Earth goddess has developed the ability to respond to human visions and ideas developing ways how to manifest them in corresponding material or pre-material forms.

5
Limiting our existence and existence of other beings to material forms should not be accepted. The range of forms in which the existing can exist is unlimited, reaching from pure spirituality, passing the realm of energy patterns up to the embodiment in material tissue. A work of art is capable of resounding throughout the entire spectrum.

6
The space of reality becomes restricted to the material form if irrevocably caught in the horizon of the reasoning mind. The space of reality becomes imprisoned in the one-dimensional space and time structure if perceived exclusively through the optics of the subjective-objective distance. If experienced holistically, however, the multidimensionality of space and time becomes apparent.

7
To experience reality in a holistic way means to perceive it by combining physical senses with one’s emotional sensitivity, imagination, and one’s intuition.
To perceive the reality of life in a holistic way means to become one with the perceived phenomenon, to embody it first within one’s inner world and only then step out of it creating a logical statement about the experience.

8
In the conditions of perception being strictly limited to the boundaries of the logical mind, artist should set an example and move beyond and navigate freely between the various dimensions of the Earth and the Universe, making use of the freedom allotted to artistic activity by the contemporary culture.

 9
Human freedom is only worth as much as other beings are free to be who they really are, either fellow human beings or other beings belonging to the natural or supra-natural worlds.
Freedom is a relative cause. A person may be free in terms of the right to vote or travel wherever they want and still be un-free if caught in the thought patterns of the governing civilization and its rules of control.

10
There are tools that enable the universe in all its diversity to be built and rebuilt in every instant. Art is allowed to use these same tools of creating reality if it is willing to collaborate with the matrices of the universal creation.

11
The path of art is simultaneously the path of self-knowledge – this is true both for artists themselves as for the people enjoying their creation – which means experiencing who an individual is in his or her essence

12
Art is capable of offering an open language of communication with beings of other dimensions of space and time that contemporary civilization is ignoring.
Art is capable of re-creating the sacredness of landscape, of the life flow permeating it and the sacredness of beings visible and invisible that are its custodians.

Marko Pogačnik, UNESCO Artist for Peace 2012–2018