Curator
Maša Žekš
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.
At their technical core, the works are still interwoven in the specific use of tape, which the author repeatedly covers, re-cuts, and carefully reconstructs. The characteristic and recognizable process of building up a painting, which is part of his artistic practice, only allows for greater tangibility, airiness, dynamic formation, and a sense of random fragmentation. The newly created series of paintings also includes small-scale works, all united in their novelty by the use of more vibrant pigments and bolder colour combinations. Pink, orange and turquoise dominate, combined with bolder, more expressive blues and reds. These are also warmer, and combined with softer lines and dazzling boldness, they more concretely illustrate heightened symbolism and content related to current local events. The aesthetics of the new production further emphasize and deepen the ambivalence and ambiguity of the still present and persistent images of hunting culture, hunting traps, hunted game and general tradition, which in the current exhibition also flirts with the historical-ideological concept.
Alongside the depicted ubiquitous doe, the pensive Jovanka, a group of angry policemen, Parisian puppies and border fences, the works address corrupted human relationships, the result of which is a secret aggression against both the environment and oneself. The images of boys accompanied by their powerful, authoritarian fathers alongside plundered game allude to the logic of transferring masculinity and responsibility to the younger generation of aspiring but, in today's world, chewed-up ideology and automatically morally undermined sons. The author clearly and at the same time cynically addresses the preservation of tradition, the aspect of passing on moral values from generation to generation, and the pressure exerted on receptive youth that manifests itself in the phenomenon of so-called toxic masculinity. To some extent, mainly due to the nature of the work and the composition of the sexes, this coincides with the entrenched initiation rites in hunting, which at their core exercise control and periodic elimination related to masculinity and protective function. With fragmentary, carved and colour-contrasting works, the artist thus explores the absurd human impulses that arise from the fruitless pursuit of additional security, absolute control, universal domination over the environment, maximum comfort and, last but not least, the almost pathologically unattainable perfection of the parental constellation.
Mito Gegič (1982) graduated from high school in Ptuj in 2002 and in the same year enrolled in the Department of Painting at ALUO under the guidance of Prof. Emerik Bernard. In 2006, as part of the CEEPUS student exchange program, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, the Department of New Media. In 2008, under the supervision of Prof. Herman Gvardjančič (co-mentor: Zmago Lenárdič), he graduated with a degree in The Edge and the Power Field. In 2016, he graduated from ALUO in painting under the mentorship of Zmago Lenárdič with the title Catched Image. He has already exhibited in many reference exhibition centres in Slovenia and abroad, including India. He is also active in film, graphic design and co-creation of the genre podcast O.B.O.D. He lives and works in Škofja Loka.
