Current

17 January — 21 March, 2025

SHAPING CHANGES

Širok Luka

The Shaping Change exhibition explores our relationship to the ever-changing environment. The title hints at both the influence and power of the environment and the potential of the individual to play an active role in changing it. Most of the works presented in the exhibition were created during a time of collective upheaval and radical social change, that is, during the pandemic, which represented both social isolation and the disturbance in supply chains. At the same time, the works also present the development and transformation of artistic practice, which was conditioned by the availability of artistic materials.

Upcoming

13 December — 23 January, 2024-2025

Tina Dobrajc - Nothing is Going to Happen Without a Warning

Dobrajc Tina

The solo exhibition by Tina Dobrajc Nothing is Going to Happen Without a Warning at the Strabag Kunstforum in Vienna.<br />The paintings of Tina Dobrajc captivate because of their unique combination of human figures amid the natural landscape, depictions of folklore traditions and the inclusion of contemporary feminist themes. Most of her intricate scenes are set in the forest, where diverse creatures meet, giving us an ominous feeling that a piercing scream hides behind the silence of the woods. The grotesque quality of the figures, which peek out elusively from behind trees like ghosts and glare at us, only reveals itself when our gaze lingers on each of them, in contrast to the serene stillness of the landscape that the paintings radiate at first glance.

Past

13 November — 10 January, 2024-2025

TELL ME Y

The exhibition TELL ME Y includes the presentation of the latest production of four artists represented by the Ljubljana Gallery Y. Tina Dobrajc, Mito Gegič, Arjan Pregl and Sašo Vrabič are presenting their paintings created in the last few years.

6 September — 4 November, 2024

Iva Tratnik - Totem and Tattoo

Tratnik Iva

Iva Tratnik’s work has an archaic, (pseudo)mythological appeal. Torn between the extreme poles of life and death—affirmatively, ecstatically, yet also bewilderingly and fatally—it tells unusual tales that bear witness to the discomfort of the human condition. The paintings, tapestries and textile sculptures combined in the Totem and Tatu exhibition create a luxurious organic, fertile, and abundant atmosphere, which is at the same time in the process of decay, breaking, and disintegration. Skulls, open bodies, dislocated organs (dissecta membra), surrounded by vital, unbridled growth and budding, present us with a kind of oneiric scenography, which, in its affirmation of opposites, is akin to an ancient mystery that performatively enacts the paradox of human existence.

17 May — 8 July, 2024

25/7? It's only natural

For the fourth time, the ECOART festival takes place in Y Gallery. This time it features the exhibition 25/7? It’s only natural, which presents the works of five young and promising Slovenian artists, which has become something of tradition at the festival. The diverse local art scene is at the forefront of the event, as it is here that all these young emerging talents are nurtured and shaped. Some of them are still at the art academy, while others are already fully paving their artistic path independently outside the safe realm of the academy. All artists, however, are fully up to speed with the big and worrisome issues at home and worldwide.<br /><br />Artists: Patrik Dvorščak, Jurij Hartman, Petra Korent, Oskar Slabe and Neža Šivec.

29 March — 13 May, 2024

2X MARUŠIČ

The beginning of spring brings an exhibition opening to Y Gallery: the intergenerational painting tandem – Ira and Živka Marušič. Father and daughter created five monumental works in the oil, wax and pigment techniques on canvas with a unique subtle work process. At their centre, the works present the artists’ captivation with nature, interpersonal relationships, the dreamlike coexistence of different entities and, finally, their own creative milieu. The title of the exhibition refers to their joint painting and sharing of the studio, as well as to a nostalgic memory from the turn of the last century, when their creative collaboration began with playful, colourful compositions filled with childish innocence and curiosity.

2 February — 25 March, 2024

Sašo Vrabič - Non-existent

Vrabič Sašo

Y Gallery is hosting our “house artist” Sašo Vrabič’s solo exhibition. Although the broader public has recently become accustomed to his dynamic figural paintings, this time the versatile artist presents us with a series of works on paper, created in pastel and watercolour techniques. This extensive, insightful and memorable series of intense human portraits is titled Non-existent. In its essence, along with heightened intensity and milieu expression, it addresses a handful of current concerns related to the artist's personal practice as well as to various faced by modern society.

8 December — 29 January, 2023-2024

ČU ČU MADAFAKA

This time, Y Gallery presents an unexpected heterogenous trio, which at the exhibition comes together as a colorful Advent surprise. Selected artists of the middle generation, Žiga Kariž, RONE84 and Denis Krašković, introduce themselves at the ČU ČU MADAFAKA exhibition with their newer works, as well as some older ones, which we have already seen in certain foreign and local galleries in a different content-rounded entirety.

29 September — 1 December, 2023

Arjan Pregl - Good One!

Pregl Arjan

At the Y Gallery Arjan Pregl presents himself with 3 different cycles, each representing a different artistic approach, content presentation and technique. Instead of the numerous drawings we recently saw at the Nova Gorica City Gallery, etchings are now on display, and intricated, precisely created and well-thought-out paintings are now joined by Collateral Paintings, the origins of which we saw last summer at the Gallery Gallery.

2 August — 7 September, 2023

Mito Gegič - The Fatherland is a Babbling Prisoner

Gegič Mito

The Kresija Gallery presents Mito Gegič’s latest production of paintings created between 2022 and 2023. The exhibition includes works of larger and smaller formats, through which we can follow the artist’s development, gradual experimentation, and changes in his painting practice. The works address problematic power relations in connection to strictly guarded political borders and the consequences that follow. The images of hunting scenes, which in the artist’s oeuvre often appear as a domestic allegory of various authorities, power relations and the latter’s abuse, are transformed in the new series into tangible images of “technical obstacles”, fatal shipwrecks and unsuccessful attempts to cross the Mediterranean. Gegič experiments with the idea of ultimate control, unwavering authority, and supremacy.

4 August — 1 September, 2023

Joškin Šiljan - Agile Images

Šiljan Joškin

This time, the Y Gallery space hosts the Serbian author Joškin Šiljan, whose gestures are characterized by intense colour surfaces, letter phrases and a free interweaving of lines. His working method is often described as automatic drawing. The resulting works contain lightness of being and wit as an escape from the ordinary and conventional. Through modern artistic expression, he seeks to articulate the unconscious, to capture the indeterminacy hidden in a dream or vision, and to show boundless freedom.

19 May — 30 June, 2023

Community.env

The group exhibition Community.env presents the works of young artists whose common point in artistic practice is the question of man's relationship with his environment in which he lives. This year, this environment is narrowed down to the concept of urban space. It includes urban planning, different urban areas, community spaces, parks, third landscapes, suburban areas and architecture. Based on the idea of the importance of community and quality of life in the city, presented in this exhibition are various artists of the younger generation, whose practice deals with urban planning, architecture, environmental protection, the human factor, capturing the pulse of the city, real estate issues and quality of life in the city. Among them are graphic artist and illustrator Ema Kobal, photographer Carolina De Matthaeis, conceptual duo DILEMA, intermediate artist and environmental activist Nejc Trampuž, artist Jernej Čuček Gerbec and artist collective Kvadratni meter.

31 March — 12 May, 2023

Mito Gegič - Go Tell the Fathers That We Are Leaving

Gegič Mito

This time Y Gallery presents a new solo exhibition of artist Mito Gegič titled Go Tell the Fathers That We Are Leaving. The paintings of various formats are mostly part of a brand-new production from 2022 and 2023, united by eccentric images from the Internet and a lot of scepticism towards modern power relations, illustrated through the prism of hunting, militia, borders, and game.

27 January — 27 March, 2023

Aleksij Kobal - Logarithms of Expression

Kobal Aleksij

Y Gallery presents a new solo exhibition by academic artist Aleksij Kobal titled Logarithms of Expression. This is the first in a series of exhibitions within the thematic project From Pixel to Canvas that will take place this year. The project includes presentations by painters whose work is primarily built from digital images.<br />The solo exhibition Logarithms of Expression brings together paintings from the artist's series The Planted, Dilemmas Crisscrossed and Wormholes of Heaven.

14 September — 18 November, 2022

Traceback() - 2. ECOART Festival

As part of the ECOART Festival, we are opening a new group exhibition at the Y Gallery where this year's group exhibition consists of various works by six local artists of the younger generation: Sara Bezovšek, Mihe Godca, Janje Kosi, Monika Slemc Klavžar, Nejca Trampuža and Ulla Žibert.<br /><br />This year's edition is entitled Traceback() and focuses primarily on invisible and visible changes related to the human environment, urbanity, nature, interconnectedness, interdependence and involvement in the socio-economic system. The works, placed in dialogue, address various issues, reflect doubts, and ask multiple questions. They address the problem of digital and physical oversaturation and refer to a suffocating present, permeated by the absolute pollution of real and virtual space. We read the artworks of many media as individual responses, or at least as the beginnings of creative thinking about our actions, our mistakes, and especially our errors.

2 June — 31 August, 2022

Tina Dobrajc - Balkan Promises

Dobrajc Tina

Artist Tina Dobrajc is returning to Y Gallery with a new exhibition, where her large-scale, mystical and always impressive paintings continue to be very popular. Thanks to her thoughtful use of rich animal iconography, numerous folkloric emblems, and sophisticated feminism, her works are sometimes startling and, above all, quickly recognizable. Kurent, accordion players, Drežnica carnival masks and naked girls with mobcaps are motifs that work perfectly in a scenographically elaborated and balanced forest landscape, getting under the viewer's skin with a touch of imaginative pop culture references.

1 April — 27 May, 2022

LAIBACH KUNST - APOCALYPSE AND OTHER STORIES

Laibach

At this exhibition, Laibach Kunst presents its newer paintings with the following remark: all images are part of a coherent artistic strategy and have a long and rich tradition with a multifaceted meaning that can never be fully grasped or resolved. The first image was condensed in a black cross and the power this symbol holds. It was followed by others from Laibach’s arsenal of images and symbols – iconic images. The exhibition is no different, as it showcases recognisable motifs, such as the thrower, the sower, the deer, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. When Laibach revisit and reinterpret these symbols, they transform them rather than (re)construct them. By doing so, they negate the very principle of “the inimitable” and introduce seriality.

14 January — 11 March, 2022

Miha Štrukelj - Side Streets

Štrukelj Miha

Miha Štrukelj is an artist with an international career who has since the late formally and substantively remained faithful to the concept of the “grid,” which is the prime basis of his works. The image of a pixel from the time of the first useful home computers combined with one of the painting methods for transferring sketches to paintings, or in Štrukelj’s case, photographs, has become and remains a building block and leitmotif of Štrukelj’s works to this day. But the use of the grid changes, albeit being a constant basis of his creations, which are to an extent expressed according to the painter’s vision, or a mere remnant of a line or a graphic element on the canvas. This results in the works’ wide variety of layering and its deepening effect.

24 September — 17 December, 2021

Mitja Ficko - Sesame Door and the 3 X Friends

Ficko Mitja

The Y Gallery is proud to present Painter Mitja Ficko and his large atmospheric canvases full of fantastic figures and an abundance of colours. The exhibition carries the unusual title Sesame Door and 3 X friends.<br /><br />For many years now, the renowned painter of the middle generation has been creating recognisable atmospheric paintings, in which he stems from his personal experience and transforming them into scenes adorned by fragments of metaphors, where the main goal of the work is not the final materialisation, but the constant transition and the relations between narrative and visual.

22 April — 28 May, 2021

Marko Jakše - SECOND ROUND

Jakše Marko

»Želim vam neobremenjen (p)ogled ... Razum pa, če se le da, potisnite vstran in v ozadje. To ni politični <br />program, ni česa razumeti. Prepustite se golim čutom in čustvom in poskušajte utripati v <br />nedoumljivem svetu domišljije ... brez gospodarja. <br /><br />Srečno!«

11 March — 19 April, 2021

Marko Jakše - ON NIGA ISLAND

Jakše Marko

Ker se je v novonastali situaciji, vemo kateri in kakšni, vsa umetnost in kultura nasploh znašla na <br />otoku, izolirana, se mi naslov zdi kar primeren ... V resnici seveda nima nikakršne, vsaj direktne ne, <br />povezave s slikami na razstavi ...