Mito Gegič: No One Will Know the Violence It Took to Become This Invisible

In his earlier works, the hunter, the prey, the space and the position of the male patriarchal stance were relatively clearly defined. Images of violence were conveyed somewhat more explicitly, which may have allowed the viewer an easier ethical orientation. In this context, Gegič does not depict only traditional hunting iconography, but also representatives of public authority and security–repressive apparatuses, through which he consistently raises questions about the agents of power and society’s relationship to them. Power and violence in the earlier works are still clearly connected to the human figure, to an indicated action and identity; the faces of hunters, fathers, police officers and other figures function as bearers of meaning and responsibility for the acts committed.
In the painting production of the past two years, this perspective changes noticeably. Human figures that would directly carry out acts of hunting, pursuit, tracking or even the slaughter of animals largely disappear from the canvas. The threatening menace spreads through subtly painted motifs of drones, military aircraft and the already established motif of the hunting hide in the artist’s oeuvre, into a constant presence of authority that has lost its face and its possibility of identification. Within the pictorial field, what often remains most recognisable are the consequences of violence already perpetrated: subtle hints of fire, a pierced peregrine falcon, or merely the head of a dead roe.
Responsibility for the act, which in earlier works was individual, personalised and at least potentially addressable, in the newer works disperses, breaks apart and fragments together with the painted scene. Images and scenes become increasingly disintegrated, almost abstracted, with this disintegration no longer established primarily through the placement of masking tape on the canvas, but through the use of colour. Saturated or diluted layers of paint, overlays and strata act as a means of dissolving the scene, whereby the formal fragmentation of the image alludes to the dispersal of responsibility and the loss of a clear bearer of action. Today, guilt is often attributed to an unattainable and abstract “higher” system, in which decisions are fragmented, tasks distributed and stripped of context, and responsibility assigned to the total system. In this way, the moral weight of the act is lost. Violence can be carried out without resistance, in the background and detached from the perpetrator. When violence is no longer personal, it is no longer driven by hatred and animosity, but by the cold rationality of procedures, covertly embedded in algorithms, bureaucracy, protocols, measures and administrative processes, often in the name of security, efficiency, development and ultimately profit. Gegič thus establishes an analogy with a world of systems of governance and control, in which the viewer is granted only a limited, fragmentary insight.
In these works, violence is not articulated solely through subject matter, but also through the very painterly language itself. Intense, saturated colours and the use of the already established masking tape either aggressively cut into the image or destabilise perspective. In this way, the artist reveals a contemporary form of violence that increasingly becomes a systemic condition and reproduces itself without the need to identify a culprit, while nature, animal and human gradually become mere variables within mechanisms of governance.

A particular emphasis in Gegič’s current oeuvre is also placed on seated male figures. Passive sitting with legs spread, a relaxed posture and an almost indifferent occupation of space establish a bodily expression of a male patriarchal position in which authority is naturalised and no longer requires active assertion, while simultaneously embodying the internalisation and uncritical acceptance of an expected social role. Figures that express power through comfort and merely through their presence thus appear as silent, passive beneficiaries of structures that enable and maintain a self-evident hierarchical position.
Gegič’s works establish conditions in which the viewer is confronted with the question of their own involveent in systems that produce, normalise and sustain social structures and concealed violence – something the artist ultimately addresses directly with the text on one of the paintings: “Continue? YES / NO”.
(Kristina Ferk)

Mito Gegič (1982) is a visual artist working in the fields of painting, video, installation and photography. He graduated in 2008 under the mentorship of Herman Gvardjančič, and in 2016 completed a postgraduate specialisation in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana under the supervision of Zmago Lenardič. He has held numerous solo exhibitions at leading venues in Slovenia and abroad, including Gallery Kresija in Ljubljana, Gallery Y in Ljubljana, the Carinthian Gallery of Fine Arts in Slovenj Gradec, Gallery Krško, the Nova Gorica City Gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Arts Celje, as well as Gaia Gallery in Istanbul and Exhibit320 Gallery in New Delhi. He has participated in many group exhibitions in Slovenia and internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, MGLC, the Maribor Art Gallery, and within international exhibition projects in the United Kingdom, Romania and Austria.
Alongside his visual art practice, Gegič is also engaged in independent research into sound and narrative formats and co-creates the genre podcast O.B.O.D. He lives and works in Škofja Loka.

Image: Mito Gegič, Violence Knows No Distances, acrylics, 35 x 25 cm, masking tape on canvas, 2025.