Marko Turk Homo faber

The enriched and enlarged exhibition Marko Turk – Homo Faber highlights some of the most vibrant work of Slovenian designer Marko Turk, a revelation for some, a master for connaisseurs - who, through the yearlong practice in the sphere of microphone construction and design, reached the very top. His path leading to the field of design was unplanned, and despite his great success, he maintained for a long time that design was not his principal activity, but rather electroacoustics. The curator of the exhibition is Špela Šubic.

Marko Turk (1920-1999) did not regard himself as a designer, still the design profession discovered him to be one of the best early on, and kept awarding him adequately. He has regularly received awards at design events, his works were exhibited in numerous retrospectives. Turk’s work was early on awarded the highest state recognition in the field of culture, the Prešeren Award.

Currently his microphones are a part of MoMA (New York, USA) exhibition Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye; MoMA’s esteemed collection holds his work since 1963.
 
Marko Turk is not only unique in his work, but in his work process as well - he made all his work by hand without sketches or plans. He mentioned in an interview, he considers this a great advantage compared to other designers. His own criteria were, however, the strictest. He was excruciatingly thorough at every slightest step of his work process.

The Museum of Architecture and Design houses the largest collection of his works. They are regularly exhibited at relevant design retrospectives, which prove that the Slovenian design was, in the early phase of the profession itself, at the highest possible quality level despite unfavourable economical and political circumstances.

MAO’s Marko Turk collection is enriched with new acquisitions as well as objects borrowed from other collections. It also holds his oldest preserved magnetophon and a series of his signature microphones called "poppy - heads".

On this occasion, Museum for Architecture and Design has published an accompanying catalogue in English, which documents 92 different microphones
and devices. The catalogue has received an award at 30th Slovenian Book Fair for the most visually pleasing book of the year 2014 in the monographs and bibliophilic editions category. It was design by Mina Žabnikar and is based on visual form of the catalogue Niko Kralj, designed by Matej Koren and Aljaž Vindiš. It is available for purchase at infobio(at)mao.si.