Jimi Hendrix. Marko Pogačnik

- Jimi Hendrix. Marko Pogačnik
1968
match boxes, 32 pieces, print on cardboard, wood veneer
30 × 20 cm

The Casino Building next to Zvezda Park, a notable venue of OHO performances, was the place where the group first started selling its OHO Edition products and other works. The matchboxes were part of OHO’s anti-institutional interventions: selling unique objects on the street was a means of achieving independence from the cultural paradigm and a shift toward everyday life. Everyday objects such as a box of matches were transformed into artworks and sold at the same price as their non-artwork antecedents. OHO applied various images to these boxes that referred mostly to popular music culture (including The Rolling Stones and The Beatles), the 1968 generation (such as with the slogan “Enjoy LSD”), and anything else that intrigued them at the time. Igor Zabel stated that this “relationship of selling and buying is nothing if not anthropocentric, since it is based on the notion of the meaning and usefulness of objects. By bringing their ‘items’ into this relationship, the OHO members were trying to oppose the very idea of the use-value as the basis of market relations.”¹ Bringing these references to an everyday object was an attempt to create synergy between two different worlds. L.S.

1
Igor Zabel: 'A Short History of OHO,' in: ″OHO / curated by Igor Zabel.″ 2nd edition, Frankfurt: Revolver, 2007. p. 112.