[31st anniversary of ACC Metelkova mesto] Miha Perne: My First Retrospective Exhibition

12 September 2024 > 04 October 2024 Kindly invited to the opening of the of the retrospective exhibition "My First Retrospective Exhibition"by Miha Perne, on Thursday, 12th September, at 7pm, at the Alkatraz Gallery. It is curated by Anabel Černohorski, Ana Grobler and Sebastian Krawczyk and are part of 31st anniversary of the ACC Metelkova mesto. Kindly welcomed also to the guided tour with the artist on Friday, 4th October at 6 pm.

With a solo retrospective exhibition and a catalogue published on this occasion, the Alkatraz Gallery wants to emphasise the extraordinary importance of creative work of one of the most outstanding painters and draughtsmen of his generation, and in the past few years, also an aspiring researcher of the ceramic medium, Miha Perne. For more than a decade, the artist has been exploring and blurring the boundaries between painting and drawing, design and ceramics in AKC Metelkova mesto, opposite the Alkatraz Gallery, where he has his art studio.

The exhibited works belong to different sets. The oldest part represents figurative painting until 2018 (it also includes one of the rarest statues – David and a Parrot (2007)). It is characterised by unusual colours, outstandingly filled canvases, full of anthropomorphic figures, and ingenious titles. At the end of this period, we are surprised by Perne's 'exercise' in a completely abstract style (e.g. Golden Shower (2017) and Tent and Coffin (2017), followed chronologically by the series Stick to Grid (2020–)). The latter emerged almost parallel to the time of the pandemic. It is modular painting, where the key is to determine the rules of the game in advance, which affect the way the pictorial field is divided. The artist turned the limitations that were typical of our everyday life to his advantage and thus opened the door to infinite possible variations within his painting explorations, which he is still testing today.

Moreover, we pay special attention to the robot, a frequent figure in the artist's media-diverse oeuvre. Its appearance speaks about the robotisation of life and dependence on technology at all levels of our activity in the world. With Perne, there is an obvious preference for the manual, whilst the choice of (painting) medium is, in fact, classic. The purity of the medium is broken down at the material level – by combining discarded objects, old prints, both in the depiction and the substrate, whereas, on the level of content, it is a diverse spectre of ideas, brainwaves, images and inscriptions, among which we can find, for instance, pop groups' lyrics or other glimpses from the popular culture, as well as less respectable everyday chores, in a word, completely ordinary topics from the lives of individuals. (The artist talks about his work in more detail in an interview, which is also included in the catalogue).

Miha Perne approaches his work with great seriousness, but apart from the good execution, what makes his artworks particularly attractive is their seeming lightness, ease, which often turns into an almost childish mischievousness, as a matter of fact, playfulness and humour. Nonetheless, the images hide deeper considerations. These are based either on the exploration of a certain (anthropological) phenomenon or on the exceptional knowledge of fine art theory, as it can be discerned from the artist's practice. Despite the colourfulness, these are not classically beautiful, likeable products. The same holds true for the paintings, drawings, doodles and ceramic creations. Among the unusual, in fact, odd figures, we frequently find also cute creatures that put us in a good mood. One of these is a building block of the newly created work No Future (2024, mixed technique). Although the lovely little dinosaurs may be a premonition of the future of humanity and as such an apocalyptic hint.

In addition to the paintings, which to a certain extent include ceramic dinosaurs, drawings take up a lot of space in the exhibition. The series entitled Serious Research of Nonsense (since 2009) is this time presented with the help of cardboard panels with ten drawings each. Perhaps Perne's fascination with the modular became noticeable again with this kind of building blocks, which also create additional wall space in the gallery. A more polished version of drawing play entitled More Nonsense, which the artist began creating later, can be distinguished also by the way of representation. These are framed works, and the drawings more decisively flirt with painting due to their processing. In addition, as part of this set, Perne presents the spatial installation entitled Laundry (2019–), which includes drawings of smaller A6 formats. As the title suggest, the artworks are attached to a taut rope in the manner of hanged washed laundry.

Miha Perne's creative work is frequently perceived predominantly through the prism of his painting oeuvre, which he exhibits most often. To a certain extent, the public also sees his painting as the most representative for the artist's imprint in the world of art. Regardless of the multifaceted nature of the artist's individual aesthetics within the exposed medium, it seems that in order to understand his approach to art, it is also important to consider Perne as a draughtsman and the context he co-created (together with Leon Zuodar) within the artistic tandem White Ice Cream (2005–).

For White Ice Cream and Miha Perne, drawing is a flexible independent medium that enables experimentation both in the creative process itself and in the exhibition format (e.g., it is the starting point for an installation or spatial site-specific design). The artists employed drawing to develop connections with other artists in formal (e.g., with the help of the publishing house White Ice Cream books & zines) and informal forms (such as drawing gatherings – e.g., the Drawing jam session in the Alkatraz Gallery and other initiatives that contributed to developing interest in zines and DIY drawing productions).

Even in his independent artistic practice, we see that the exploration of the drawing medium is not present only in drawings, but also in the paintings themselves, which, especially in the early periods of the author's creativity, were strongly anchored in figural art. The images that populate these artworks, can be seen as a kind of drawing studies on canvas, important not so much for the meanings they convey, but rather for their formal explorations.

Miha Perne's work(ing) is important from several aspects. In his artistic practice, the author has been devoting himself to research and experimentation, painting and drawing for several years, meanwhile occupying a unique space on the Slovene art scene. Regardless of the fact that his approach is modernist at its core and one might expect the artist to distance himself from the banality of the everyday life within the chosen medium, it is the other way around: an inseparable mixture of banality and art permeates every pore of Perne's existence, which is the reason why he brings it into the spaces where he is present. In this way, he organically expands the boundaries of expression and transitions between 'high' and 'low' culture without major problems, and often spontaneously contributes to the formation of a community – to the connection within the circle of artists who are individually oriented in their work. Simultaneously, “Miha Perne does not create with the purpose of changing the world or at least directly drawing attention to the social problems. He is a painter who expresses opposition to utilitarianism and connects artistic practice to the aesthetics without additional political or educational contexts. At the time when the dominant paradigm is to be a revolutionary, his humble attempt at exploring the world with the help of imagination works surprisingly persuasively.”[1] With his artistic engagement, which includes irrepressible zeal for repetition in the mixture of weighting the phenomena of modernity and an almost mathematical deliberation on form, in the retrospective exhibition, he proves that it is possible to captivate and insightfully portray modern world or the way it operates by means of an unstoppable imagination.

[1] Sebastian Krawczyk, Miha Perne: Triceps (Pivka, Pivka House of Culture, 2–23 March 2018).

Anabel Černohorski, Sebastian Krawczyk

Miha Perne (1978, Ljubljana) works in the fields of painting, drawing and ceramics. In 2004, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, majoring in painting.
His most important solo exhibitions include: Of Age (Generali Gallery, Ljubljana 2023) together with Leon Zuodar (White Ice Cream); Stick To Grid (Ravnikar Gallery Space, Ljubljana 2021); Jurij Kalan and Miha Perne (Art Factory, Majšperk 2018); Triceps (House of Culture Pivka, Pivka 2018); BOOK (Krško Gallery, Krško 2017) together with Leon Zuodar (White Ice Cream); Crowd (Medical Chamber of Slovenia, Ljubljana 2016); White Ice Cream – 10 years (Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana 2015) with Leon Zuodar. His group exhibitions include, among others: Drawmania (The City Gallery Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica 2024); Finding New Images (Simulaker Gallery, Novo mesto 2023); Figural Art (Cukrarna, Ljubljana 2023); ART ACTUEL (Pyramide des Métiers d'Art, Saint-Amand-Montrond, France 2023); OSM (Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje, Celje 2019), Zines! (International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana 2017); What is yours, nothing is yours! (Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana 2017).
He is the recipient of the O HO group award (2011) together with Leon Zuodar (as part of the artistic duo White Ice Cream) and recognition for the quality of art works at the 12th International Festival of Fine Arts Kranj (2023). Since 2010, he has been creating in the studio in AKC Metelkova mesto in the building Garaža (Garage).

Miha Perne (1978, Ljubljana) works in the fields of painting, drawing and ceramics. In 2004, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, majoring in painting.
His most important solo exhibitions include: Of Age (Generali Gallery, Ljubljana 2023) together with Leon Zuodar (White Ice Cream); Stick To Grid (Ravnikar Gallery Space, Ljubljana 2021); Jurij Kalan and Miha Perne (Art Factory, Majšperk 2018); Triceps (House of Culture Pivka, Pivka 2018); BOOK (Krško Gallery, Krško 2017) together with Leon Zuodar (White Ice Cream); Crowd (Medical Chamber of Slovenia, Ljubljana 2016); White Ice Cream – 10 years (Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana 2015) with Leon Zuodar. His group exhibitions include, among others: Drawmania (The City Gallery Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica 2024); Finding New Images (Simulaker Gallery, Novo mesto 2023); Figural Art (Cukrarna, Ljubljana 2023); ART ACTUEL (Pyramide des Métiers d'Art, Saint-Amand-Montrond, France 2023); OSM (Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje, Celje 2019), Zines! (International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana 2017); What is yours, nothing is yours! (Alkatraz Gallery, Ljubljana 2017).
He is the recipient of the O HO group award (2011) together with Leon Zuodar (as part of the artistic duo White Ice Cream) and recognition for the quality of art works at the 12th International Festival of Fine Arts Kranj (2023). Since 2010, he has been creating in the studio in AKC Metelkova mesto in the building Garaža (Garage).

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Interview with the artist

Within AKC Metelkova mesto you have an organised work space and you spend more time here. What meaning does Metelkova space have for you? How have your relationship and connection to it been changing over the years? Did Metelkova have an influence on your artistic activity: do you feel a part of Metelkova? If yes, in what sense: artistic? As part of a certain community? Or in some other way?

Metelkova is a space that I mainly divide into a fun part and a work part. But sometimes these two components also get a little bit mixed up. At the very beginning, I got to know it as a place where alternative artists create. I was given the task of photographing artworks from people who work there for a catalogue. That's probably how I met Mirč (Miroslav Matek, editor's note) among the first at the end of the 1990s, who had a carpentry workshop in The Pešaki building, followed by Pešo (Miran Pešić – Pešo, editor's note) and so on. Then, during college, I was only partying at Metelkova, and only around 2010, when I got a studio as part of Garages, did I move to my first real workspace. Before that, I used to create in the kitchen or on the living room floor, but then it started for real. If before I used to look at the clock to see when I had to stop hammering, if I happened to be driving nails or something like that, here those worries were gone. The space sucked me in and became my second home. I slowly started making contact with other Garages' users, with the persons on duty and the Alkatraz Gallery team. That was mainly it, as far as hanging out with people from Metelkova is concerned. Neighbours from the Garages still bring me all sorts of things, from sub-frames and papers to paints, and, in this way, somehow contribute to the final image of my works. Even more broadly speaking, Silvo (Silvo Metelko, editor's note) gave me a gramophone and, in this way, significantly contributed to the sound atmosphere of my studio. Music means a lot for me while I work.

For more than twelve years I was intensively present in my studio, even twice a day, often until late hours, so, yeah, of course I felt like a proper Metelkovian. During corona, when curfew was in force, I wrote myself an official permit to work here until midnight, so many times, when I was leaving, I saw Metelkova completely empty and alone.

Together with Edvin Dobrilović and Leon Zuodar, I made a few public interventions in Metelkova and I exhibited several times in the Alkatraz Gallery, and once also in the The Night Window Display Gallery Pešak and another gallery, which was located somewhere upstairs in Pešaki building (Mizzart Gallery, editor's notes). ... So, I wasn't always confined to my studio in this small town.

A few years ago, you experienced an unpleasant surprise when the building directly below your studio burned down. Was your space affected too? How did this event affect your creativity, your well-being at Metelkova and practical aspects, such as, for instance, storage of your work?

I live pretty close to the fire brigade and every time they turn on the sirens on their truck, I listen whether they are driving towards Metelkova to extinguish something. This is how it affected my psyche. At the time when this happened, when my studio was also on fire a bit, I decided to move some of my paintings home. I rescued these same paintings from the basement a few years later, as flash flood arrived and completely flooded the basement where the paintings were stored. Sometimes I realise little by little how everything is fleeting.

How do you perceive the relationship between the content and the formal part of the work of art: what takes more of your attention? We perceive your works as occasionally somewhat hermetic and connected to internal stories and subjective meanings that may be unknown to the viewer, so we wonder how important it is that the content you communicate with your works is defined and accessible?

Um, indeed, for a time I was making bizarre, seemingly encrypted paintings. Looking back, sometimes it all seems like one big nonsense without head and tail. But some paintings still touch me and I see them as a completely different person who had nothing do with the whole thing. I don't know how, but slowly geometry crept into these figural landscapes and eventually pushed them out thoroughly. This is where the link between the formal aspect and the content finally began to be established. It started with robots, which began to jump from miniature formats to slightly larger ones and began to dress more and more according to principles of the network that every orthogonal painting format contains underground. This grid then became the main building block of the painting. Various topics came to me, glimpses from the shared past of my generation, findings on Wikipedia, or songs that were going on repeat in my head, and then I tried to transform them into the fine art world with the help of the grid. The cycle called Stick to Grid was born. Stick to grid is effectively a paraphrase of a Photoshop programme command called snap to grid. When this cycle started to emerge, it was a strange period, when we had to follow different corona rules every other day, and perhaps that's why I had to set some painting rules for myself, in which I would have a really good time. The fact that I limited my compositions to a rather simple modular construction opened up countless possible solutions.

What are the key issues that you address in your work and which interests most representatively characterise your work or individual sections within your oeuvre? Is such a generalisation even appropriate or are thematic definitions outside the focus of your work?

How I approach my work can change a great deal in the course of a day. Even if we start only with the morning kitchen work, where the main part of the cycle Serious Research of Nonsense takes place, the way of working is usually different from the work I do later in the studio. Serious Research of Nonsense involves drawing on A4 paper format, which is usually already waiting for me on the table. It takes me forever to wake up, and usually in this state, when I wait for the first cafetiere to bubble, I start scrabbling on this paper. Otherwise, for me, the real doodling is the drawing that flows by itself when, for instance, I'm talking on the phone or waiting for my old computer to perform a task. But I think that the state of a half-awake person also contributes to the fact that doodling is perfectly fine. With these drawings, I don't make sure that the drawing is technically perfect, I don't care if the markers or ballpoints are impermanent. I deal with this more in the studio. If I produce things that might sell one day, I make sure that the potential buyer gets as durable product as possible. This is not the case with the morning drawings. When I later started with the cycle More Nonsense, I was more careful that drawings were on a better paper, that they were executed with more durable materials, although I tried to maintain that morning chaos and some nonsensical content, and, simultaneously, compose more soberly and search for boundaries or relationships between drawing and painting. Even in my figurative paintings, which I was creating from approximately 2012 until 2018, there was no serious content concept. It was more of a journey, discovering what was hidden in the underpainting, which I usually made vehemently with a broad brush. At some point, the traces of the brush began to invite me to clarify them, model them. It was only with the cycle Stick to Grid that I started, at least I believe so, to convey more straightforward statements. Let's say that I was still starting from my life and memories like some kind of a naive painter, except that concepts that are perhaps more ingrained in the national identity or common memory of a generation started to appear to me. I realized that I'm already at such an age that if I just mention, say, The Kelly Family many of my younger colleagues don't know what I'm talking about. So, just the words The Kelly Family establish a certain Zeitgeist and are a sufficient motif for a painting. As if we were dinosaurs, keeping our own very special music collection. At the same time, for instance, I was interested in the concept of family bands, all their ups and downs, how they lived and so on. Wikipedia was often included in the preparations and so I almost always did a little research about a certain topic. Sometimes the inspiration for a painting came from a radio show on Radio Student, for instance, once they were explaining the phenomenon of turbofolk, who named it and how it then transformed into turbo polka in Slovenia. This is how the painting Turbo Polka was created. As a symbol of our mixed identities, I later created the painting entitled Pizza Burek. These two paintings with their titles in some kind of funny way communicate who we are as a nation, both in music and cuisine. Some kind of a mixture of cultures that surround us or are a part of our history. Pizza Burek is practically a completely Slovenian dish that originates here and consists of two words that convey that an Italian and a Balkan are united into one.  In addition to drawing and painting, in my artistic practice, I'm now also working with ceramics, which is expanding the world to me into the third dimension, which before was just an illusion. I'm in some intermediate space between drawing, painting and sculpture.

Your artistic exploration is thematically very diverse and based on various interests – you're a passionate collector of discarded objects, you like to accumulate old printed matter, which you often incorporate in your works, and you like to garden in your spare time. What topics are you most interested in lately? Can you choose a work or two that you are especially fond of and tell us what you associate them with?

Lately, I have been intensively producing porcelain dinosaurs. I intend to make one thousand. They are relief, mostly sitting dinosaurs. I find it hard to explain this obsession, but doing this reminds me of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I read years ago and it's not even one of my favourite books, but there is a part in it where one of the protagonists of this novel returns home after many great adventures, shuts himself in the workshop and starts forging some kind of fish. Even before in my work appeared a similar obsession with only one main motif. These were robots and much earlier, around 2004, dogs. I can say that the appearance of symbols in my work is a constant, whereas form, technique and construction or composition change. If I had to single out an individual work or two, it would be hard for me to do so, but I can say that my favourite period is around the year 2012.

Your paintings, even the relatively large format ones, always appear to be filled up. Is it important that no part of the canvas is left uncultivated? Where does this need to fill come from?

I don't know, maybe I have a fear of empty spaces.

You create in different media; painting is the most visible part of your art, although it seems that the drawing part of your creative work might be more important? How would you comment on that? How do you choose your medium?

For me, drawing is probably the fastest way to create a fine art form. Since it can be done on the cheapest or even free paper, it does not bear the burden of having to succeed, to carry a message, to have a certain weight or position in the world of art. It is just a drawing or doodle, spontaneous, unimportant, intimate, fast, impulsive, funny, sad. Drawing can be therapeutic; it can be a way of socialising if I draw together with friends. Drawing can be a study. If there are many of these drawings, they can also be stored very easily, piled up, and don't take up much space. Paintings are another story. These are more material things that take up much more space, especially if they don't move anywhere and lie in the studio for years. Lately, I've been working intensively with ceramics, among other things, also because at some point, I started to feel reluctance towards painting, especially to the whole scene surrounding it. In principle, I live a fairly modest life, and most of the paintings I produced would be accessible only to the elite, with whom I have no contact. This abyss has repeatedly made me question the point of it all. Painting is something I devote most of my time and attention to in my life and such questions, for the most part, don't come to the fore, although they still appear. Perhaps I was just locked in the studio for too long and I had to socialise, step out of the cocoon. With ceramics, I escaped these questions and solitariness a bit. The studio where I create with porcelain and clay, is open to the street, and it's nice to see people stopping in front of the window or entering the space. I get some honest feedback from ordinary people, usually random passers-by. I also feel as if I was studying for a new major again. Of course, the drawing and painting didn't disappear in this new medium, they are still here, only the material or the base has changed.

What role does chance and, more generally, the unconscious play in your creativity? What role does it play in your decisions about the choice of painting technique and subject matter?

Everything is very intertwined; all I know is that one stroke leads to another and one realised idea to the upgrade of this very idea or variations on the theme just follow one another. But sometimes the beginning can be just some cheesy song that goes on in my head all day long, and then, within this banality, I look for some artistic solutions in the field of painting or drawing.

What's the role and importance of repetition in your creative work? Here we have in mind both the repetitive processes, that is, the way of building your artwork, and the repetition of some 'characters' in your oeuvre, such as clown, robots and dinosaurs? Could you point out any other 'permanent residents' of your universe?

Houses, dogs, cats, elephants, griffins, snails, bears, devils, angels, dwarfs, yetis, mermaids, flowers, acanthus leaves, Mickey Mouse, birds, spruce trees, cacti, clouds, isohypsis, snakes ... all these motifs have been with me for quite some time. Repetition, as in some segments our life repeats itself, seasons, years, the way we wipe ourselves with a towel when we get out of the shower. Basically, I pay attention to these repetitions – not only with myself and in fine art. Also with film directors, in literature and music, a certain topic appears non-stop with artists. Why can't we say something about a certain topic and then conclude with it, why do we repeat ourselves? These are the questions I often ask myself. When I scrabble on paper, it often happens that I start somewhere in the upper right with some repetitive stroke. If I take the project Serious Research of Nonsense as an example again, there are many repetitions of some formal solutions, motifs, textual messages, but that's how it goes when we repeat something day by day.

In a certain period, you started almost every painting by covering the surface with windings, made with a broad brush, which then crystallised into final images, full of unusual faces, anthropomorphic gargoyles and animals. Who were these characters that still appear, for instance, on vases and small ceramic products, not to mention your drawing production?

These were the characters I saw in stains. Even in the drawings, especially in the series Laundry, I relied on previously made stains that serve as a kind of trigger, sometimes they are like some kind of Rorschach tests that I create for myself with different drippings of diluted ink on paper. It feels so natural for me to start with a stain. Already as a child I looked at the clouds and searched for images in them.

What brought you in contact with ceramics? What does this way of working offer you? If you can guess, how do you see the relationship between painting work and participation in the field of ceramics in the future?

Nevena Aleksovski called me once and told me that Škuc (Škuc Gallery, part of the ŠKUC Association, editor's note) organises a free workshop in some studio where they were supposed to design with clay. This studio also had a super favourable programme outside of the workshop and my obsession began. That was in 2020. This was for a while my official answer as to how it all started. But when I started to search my memory in more detail, I became aware of the fact that I basically spent half of my childhood in an abandoned clay pit, which was full of mud, water and trash. In fact, I returned to my primary playground. Well, later on, again completely by coincidence, Bojana Ristevski Mlaker took me in her hands and said that she would let me try clay, which is called stoneware, that this is the next level and that I have to try it out – that this is 'the real thing'. When she was going to Belgrade for two weeks, she lend me the keys of her studio, so that I could finish painting the products that I have previously made in my kitchen, as if to say that this was the best. Well, I still haven't returned the keys to this day. Everything happened very spontaneously. From the very beginning, I approached the medium of ceramics as a painter, since, at the beginning, I was more interested in the painting part than in the form of the products, but later on, when I started to design porcelain, I arrived to some kind of a fusion between sculpture and painting.

The colour palette which we associate with your work and some of your ceramic products is also interesting – for instance, pink and poisonous green shades. The colours, together with eccentric and skewed characters, create a world that looks quite Lynchian. In addition to humour, your creative universe, as a matter of fact, has a scary side. Is it important for the artist to arouse a certain degree of unease in the viewer?

Um, basically I create because this activity makes me happy and distances me from discomfort. I could say that creative activity is a kind of art therapy for me. I strive to make my works appear beautiful, harmonic; if there is something on them that makes the viewer uncomfortable, this is not my problem. I once watched a film about the life of Vincent van Gogh. There was a scene in the film where Vincent showed a sophisticated lady his drawing rendered in charcoal that depicted worker's leather shoes. The lady almost fainted with the shock when she saw it. Namely, she considered it terrible that anyone would even think of painting such a plebeian motif. A work of art can be insulting, distasteful and horrible, depending entirely on the context and time in which it finds itself. I often think about how it would look if the mouldings that decorated bourgeois houses a hundred and more years ago, where naked little angels and puttos throw themselves over each other, were placed on modern buildings. What would people say about that? As far as colours and relationships between them are concerned, I strive to make them work together nicely.

What role do collaborations with other artists play? After all, you are a part of the artistic duo White Ice Cream and a certain art scene, to which you and Leon Zuodar contributed a great deal, also with the promotion of drawing as an independent artistic medium. How do you see their role: in the context of mutual support, expanding the boundaries of artistic expression or in any other context?

Leon certainly contributed the most to the fact that I started to occupy myself with drawing in such an intense and versatile way. From the very beginning, I found him to be an exceptional draughtsman. His formal innovations are still a marvel to me today: how he can with such ease draw a completely banal event or uttered word and make it hilarious. And his work at the academy was exceptional; ever since we have known each other, from the very beginning, he has been my mentor, although he probably doesn't even know it. The same holds true for other classmates and colleagues from senior years at college. Very early on, I realised that cooperation is important and often also fun. The first project we executed as White Ice Cream (Antijokes) was pure banter that slowly turned into something serious. For instance, we received the OHO Group Award, published several booklets and zines, prepared numerous exhibitions and exhibition projects, and invited friends and authors whom we value as draughtsmen to participate in two books. That's how we all got connected into a certain scene, which we, in a way, co-created. Later on, we started jamming with friends at Metelkova or as duets in our studios or apartments. Such dimensions are hard to describe. Last, we jammed with friends on porcelain cups and the feelings are great. Connections between artists are important, because we support each other, we are connected, we understand each other or understand well what someone is really doing, we steal from each other and we tell this to each other and laugh about it.

You used to organize art meetings, drawing jam sessions, in your studio, but now you and Nevena Aleksovski co-organize Zinkubator – open creative zine workshops, where you act as a mentor. As an external employee, you had a crack also at a teaching role at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana. How to you feel in this role and do you wish to continue doing this?

All those roles happened rather spontaneously and by-the-way. Zinkubator is a different experience than teaching at the academy. The first is a meeting, where we all sit at the same table, we draw over each other, we are somehow relaxed, we joke, laugh, we eat Smokies and chips together, while the second is a study in the studio, where a still life is set up, the students paint it, and I share the corrections. People of very different ages and with very different drawing skills most frequently attend Zinkubator. There, it is more about exploring the drawing in all its heterogeneity. To the participants who say that they don't draw very often or never at all, I repeatedly say that this is so much better or that we need it, because magic often happens with them that we professionals no longer know how to do. We learn from each other, and even at the academy, I'm not their only teacher in those four hours we spend together.

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Curated by: Anabel Černohorski, Sebastian Krawczyk, Ana Grobler
Translation to English language: Ana Makuc
Photography by: Nada Žgank

Project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and City Council Ljubljana.