Proposals, dreams and utopias from Zagreb. A selection of unrealized and refused art projects by MoRE Museum

The exhibition, presented both online and at the MSU in Zagreb (November 9–December 8, 2018), grew out of a residency held the previous spring, when the curators of MoRE, a Museum of Refused and Unrealised Art Projects, were invited by the MSU to explore the city's contemporary art scene.

During the residency, numerous unrealised projects, dating from the 1950s to the present day, were discovered in archives and artists' studios.

Thanks to the interplay between the physical and digital exhibitions, visitors will be able to discover works such as Total Portrait of the City of Zagreb (1979) by Tomislav Gotovac (Sombor, 1937–Zagreb, 2010), a draft for a documentary screenplay about the city of Zagreb; The Lost Pavilion, an unbuilt pavilion by David Maljković (Rijeka, 1973) conceived for the city of Lyon; and a proposal by Petar Dabac (Zagreb, 1942) for an unbuilt museum dedicated to photography in Zagreb (Muzej za fotografiju – Museum of Photography, 1986).

The exhibition also features several conceptual projects by Vlado Martek (Zagreb, 1951), which lie at the intersection of linguistic and visual research, such as Ambivalentna tautologija (2013–2014) and Ništa (2015); two unrealised videos by Marko Tadić (Sisak, 1979), The Moons (2011), in which the artist intended to document the existence of a second moon, and The Room (2009), a stop-motion video depicting a spiritualist séance; and Lithopuncture (2004), a project for a series of urban sculptures by Marko Pogačnik.

The latter was part of Urban Intervention, a project organised by the Sirius Centre and promoted by the MSU. Some of the sculptures remain in Lake Jarun Park in Zagreb, while other elements installed in the city centre were removed or relocated several years later.

Two well-known historical projects are also exhibited: the Yugoslavian Pavilion, designed but never realised for the Paris Exposition of 1950, and the result of a collective design process involving Ivan Picelj (Okučani, 1924–Zagreb, 2011), Zvonimir Radić (Zagreb, 1921–1985), Vjenceslav Richter (Drenova, 1917–Zagreb, 2002), and Aleksandar Srnec (Zagreb, 1924–2010); and Synthurbanism, Richter's visionary project of the 1950s and 1960s.