“About the Installation”
When Slovenian artist Matej Vogrincic first visited New Haven at the invitation of Site Projects, it was the abandoned, depressed Farmington Canal cut in the middle of the city’s busy legal/financial center and award-winning arts district that caught his attention. Opened for commercial traffic in 1828, the Farmington Canal failed to produce the expected revenues and was soon converted to an industrial rail line, remaining active into the 1960’s. Although many sections of this right-of-way between New Haven and Northampton, MA have been converted to a popular linear park, the renovation of this final section had yet to be undertaken. untitled (this used to be my playground) began the restoration efforts of the last overgrown section of the Farmington Canal. Residents -- both young and old -- volunteered to assist Site Projects in its efforts to clean the canal.
While in New Haven, Vogrincic also visited the Eli Whitney Museum and learned of another icon of New Haven and America’s industrial heritage: the Erector Set. New Haven’s A.C. Gilbert Company manufactured these nationally renowned metal toy construction kits throughout most of the 20th Century.
Inspired by the history of these nationally-loved toys and the mysterious quality of the abandoned canal, Vogrincic had identified the tools and the place to create a striking site-specific, temporary work of art. Vogrincic created enormous steel boats reminiscent of these beloved classic toys and filled them with the building blocks of the city: brick, crushed trap rock and oyster shells. Audio tours by local historians and scholars were recorded and could be accessed through one’s cellphone. Class visits were given during the International Festival. The installation remained on view for 4 months when the materials were given to the Common Ground High School who came to the site and gathered the brick and steel pieces to use in landscaping. This was Vogrnicic’s first large-scale installation in the United States.
“Media”











“About the Artist”
MATEJ ANDRAŽ VOGRINČIČ (b. October 12, 1970, Ljubljana, Slovenia) 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, Vogrincic starts with the space but always leaves room to alter and develop the idea in the process. He regularly relies upon a direct connection with the local community to help him create his projects, 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 Australia’s Adelaide 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 Australia’s Perth, 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. His most recent exhibition, commissioned for the 4th Liverpool Biennial in England and featured in The Guardian newspaper andLIFE magazine, was an installation of 56 upturned boats placed inside the bombed ruins of the Gothic Era St. Luke’s Church.
Other works from the Artist
Projects in Public Spaces
2006 St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool, England
2005 When on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, GPO Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
2004 Untitled (Forest), Ljubljana, Slovenia
2003 Beach Balls, Perth, Australia
2002 Moon Plain, Coober Pedy, Australia
Port, Christchurch, New Zealand
Car Park: Members Only, Adelaide, Australia
1999 Dressed House, Venice, Italy
1997 Street Wear, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1993 House, 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 Galllery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1992 Ready Made, SKUC Gallery, 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 (Artists in Architecture) Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain
1997 U3, Triennial of Slovene Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
This Art is Recycled, SKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
1996 Urbanaria, SCCA, Ljubljana, Slovenia
“Educational Resources + Commentary”
Audio EssayS
+ The Trumble Diaries: Matej Andraž Vogrinčič by Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art Angus Trumble
+ A.C. Gilbert & Memory by William Brown, Eli Whitney Museum
+ A Short History of the Farmington Canal by the New Haven Museum and Historical Society
+ The Farmington Canal in the Urban Landscape by Alan J. Plattus, Professor of Architecture, Yale University
+ Water to Rails: Industrial Growth in New Haven *by Professor Douglas Rae, Yale University School of Management*
“Sponsors, Donors & Supporters”
Vogrincic/New Haven: Art in the Canal is made possible through grants, donations, and support from:
Lead Sponsors
ABC Pomurka International
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
The Connecticut Humanities Council
Ministry of Culture, Republic of Slovenia
NewAlliance Foundation
City of New Haven–Liveable City Initiative; Department of
Parks, Recreation and Trees; City Plan Department
Greater New Haven Convention and Visitors Bureau
Yale University–Office of New Haven and State Affairs; Office of the Deputy Provost for the Arts; Yale Facilities; Yale Security
Fred and Laura Clarke
Jerome and Roslyn Meyer
Sponsors
Bank of America
Bob Bloom–nrb3 / Bloom Brothers
Peter Chapman–La Saraghina
Cheshire Endocrinology & Internal Medicine
Eric Epstein–Epstein Design Associates
Daniel Fine–Bagel Fish Productions
Grove Parking Associates
Konover Office & Commercial Corporation
Konover Properties Corporation
Ethel & Abe Lapides Foundation
Gary Lyon–Lyon Construction
Nikko America
Chris Ozyck–Alfresco Landscape and Design
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
Dean Sakamoto Architects
Len Suzio–Suzio York Hill Companies
Jack and Betsey Dunham
Betsy Henley Cohn
Ruth Lapides
Kenley Lawton
Henry Lord
David and Deborah Moore
Susan and Steven Smith
Contributors
Amity Wine & Spirit Company
William Brown–Eli Whitney Museum
Jack Design
Thomas F. Harberg & Associates
Kennedy & Perkins Guild Opticians
Koffee on Audubon
Maresca & Associates
Chris Naumann–Chris Naumann Landscaping
New Haven Museum & Historical Society
Pot-au-Pho
Schwartz & Hofflich
Sitar Restaurant
Town Green Special Services District
Triola Productions
A. Defne Veral Interiors
Walker Solutions
Linda Briggs
Jay and Grace Bright
Anne and Guido Calabresi
Jennifer Davies
Birgitta Johnson
Charles and Gretchen Kingsley
Aidan Moran
Elisabet Orville
Susan Papa and David Schatz
Charles Pillsbury
Alan Plattus
Sarah Prown and John Coleman
Douglas Rae
David Reynolds
Judy Sirota Rosenthal
Mary Dean Solomon
Michael Vollmar and Paulette Rosen
George Zdru
Friends
Arts Council of Greater New Haven
Creative Arts Workshop
Sam Gougsa–LAZ Parking
Barbara Lamb–City of New Haven, Office of Cultural Affairs
Neighborhood Music School
Nick Seaver–Branford College
Bill Adinolfi
Raymond Allen
Carmine Amento
David Barone
Sam Clarke
Dominick Coppola
Leila Crockett
Win Davis
Mat DiGiovanna
Susan Farricielli
Vassiliki Giannopoulos
Christy Hass
Gary Hogan
Carlos Hortas
Stephen Kobasa
Michael Moran
Mark Morazes
Nicholas Rock
Kai Sakamoto
Naomi Sakamoto
Martha Savage
Sam Shevelkin
Will Solomon
P.J. Vessicchio
Joseph Vitali