Curator
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.
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. He likes to experiment with perspective and space, which he builds and often layers in a very particular way, using vivid colours and numerous geometric shapes, turning the varied, multi-layered and imaginatively combined works into attractive and experience-filled discourse. The Sesame Door and the 3 X Friends exhibition presents paintings that were excluded from the spring exhibition Peel Gently (Lupi se nežno) in the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Celje. The selected works were significantly more narrative-based and, with their clearer figuration, did not fit into the exhibition, the formal asset of which was the transition to the abstract. Then unseen paintings such as Don’t Look Back (2019) and Four X Friends (2019) have now been complied and are on display in the Y Gallery.
The works are therefore somewhat more narrative-based, portraying distinguishable human figures, city views, landscapes and zoomorphic figures, such as ducks and dogs, even elephants and unusual giraffes. As is typical for the author, the atmospheric paintings full of fantasy and perspective complexity also express the elements of space-layering using glitter, horizontal colourful stripes or multi-layered rainbow images. The exhibited paintings thus complement the larger exhibition in Celje while connecting the previously dominant abstraction with well-known figuration and a clearer narrative. The selection of works consists of large-format paintings created in the last two years, and they are also joined by two smaller paintings, in which rainbow layering intertwines and a semicircular arch motif that alludes to a road tunnel on the principle of tunnel perspective. This is just a fragment of many paintings with the “tunnel” theme, which represent the author’s very personal experience of long drives and returning home from Leipzig, where he also works and has a studio. Mitja Ficko emphasises and proves through his works that returning to his earlier pieces, relentless practice and allowing the images to simply “happen” is what presents him with a fruitful artistic journey ahead, packed with constant surprises. The title of the exhibition comes from the two titles of exhibited paintings, but it also alludes to the magic and wealth that is hidden behind Sesame door every time a painter steps in front of an empty canvas. This time, the canvases in the Y Gallery are covered with astonishing colours and fantastic figures, with which we, the observers, revisit the artist’s older paintings, which allows us to experience his more recent work with greater ease.
Mitja Ficko (1973, Murska Sobota) completed his studies of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 1999 under the mentorships of professors Janez Bernik and Gustav Gnamuš. In 2002, he obtained his master’s degree under the mentorship of Metka Krašovec. During his career, he has held solo exhibitions at Equrn Gallery in Ljubljana, Kibla in Maribor, Coastal Galleries in Piran, Srečišče Gallery in Ljubljana, UGM Studio Art Gallery in Maribor, Alkatraz Gallery in Ljubljana, Apartment House in Celje, Kusthalle Ravensburg, Galerie Sechzig in Feldkirch, Miklovi house in Ribnica and the Staetische Galerie Villingen-Schwenningen. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as Presences, KIBLA Portal in Maribor (2018), The Tremendous World I have Inside my Head (Metamodernism and metaromanticism in Slovenian painting), KGLU in Slovenj Gradec (2019), Time Without Innocence, Newer painting in Slovenia at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana (2019), Apocalypse 2020 (2020) in the Equrna Gallery in Ljubljana, The Curious Minds and Die ich rief,die Geister, werd ich nun nicht los at the Leipzig International Art Programme (LIA), Spinnerei, Leipzig (2020). Ficko works and lives in Ljubljana and Leipzig.
