The Kingdom brings together different worlds that I have been building through painting for many years. Rather than presenting one particular style or one coherent series, I wanted to bring together the different visual languages, characters and ideas that have appeared throughout my work: clowns, mutants, cyborgs, monsters, animals, heroes, shoppers, hybrids and other invented beings. They come from different periods of my practice, but I have started to see them less as separate subjects and more as inhabitants of the same world.
The Kingdom is this world.
My characters have always been assembled from things I encounter around me. Cartoons, science fiction, horror films, toys, sneakers, advertisements, popular culture and everyday objects enter the paintings alongside fears and anxieties about the society I live in. The figures are hybrids because my own experience is hybrid. They are constructed from fragments of childhood memories, consumer culture, technology, mythology, and contemporary life.
The cyborg and the mutant were some of the earliest forms through which I began to explore this idea. The cyborg is neither completely human nor completely machine; the mutant is neither one thing nor another. Frankenstein’s monster, the xenomorph and the superhero became important references because they represent bodies that have been constructed, modified or pushed beyond what we understand as natural. They are creatures of transformation.
This transformation has always been connected to the world around me. Growing up in Slovenia during the 1990s, I experienced the rapid arrival of Western consumer culture alongside the remnants of a socialist society. American cartoons, sneakers, brands, films and music arrived with an intensity that made them feel both foreign and incredibly desirable. They became part of my visual language before I fully understood what they represented. Later, I began to recognize the darker side of that attraction: consumerism, competition, corporate power, and the idea that happiness could be purchased. My shoppers and sneaker-wearing characters were therefore never simply celebrations of these objects. They were also reflections of my own fascination with them. I eventually understood that the consumer I was painting was not simply somebody else—it was also me.
The clown emerged from a similar contradiction. The clown smiles while something underneath may be completely different. It became a mask for happiness, but also for anxiety, loneliness, desire and absurdity. The mutant and the cyborg operate in a similar way. They appear powerful, funny or heroic, but they are also products of a world that constantly asks us to adapt, consume and transform ourselves.
The xenomorph has remained an important reference for me because it brings many of these ideas together. It is a perfect organism, but its perfection is frightening. It survives through aggression, adaptation and an almost complete absence of empathy. For me, it has become a strange image of the contemporary consumer and of the systems we have created around ourselves: highly efficient, endlessly hungry and capable of reproducing themselves. At the same time, the xenomorph connects to my interest in bioengineering, artificial intelligence and the possibility that our attempts to control nature and technology might produce something that eventually escapes our control.
In the new paintings, these earlier concerns don’t disappear. They become less literal and more mythological.
The figures begin to look like inhabitants of a strange contemporary folklore: The Angel Unicorn Tamer, The Green Hero, The Thing, The Bear, The Centaur, The Werewolf Queen, The Sea King. There are kings, queens, heroes, animals and monsters, but they don’t belong to a traditional mythology. They are assembled from fragments of the myths, cartoons, movies and commercial imagery that have shaped my imagination.
This is where The Kingdom comes from.
I see the exhibition as a place where the different stages of my practice can coexist. The clown can stand next to the cyborg. The mutant can become a hero. The xenomorph can become an animal. The consumer can become a mythological creature. The monster can become a king.
The Kingdom is therefore not a fixed place. It is constantly changing, just like the paintings. Its inhabitants transform, exchange identities and borrow parts from one another. The different styles I have developed over the years are part of this same process. I am less interested in creating one recognizable visual system than in allowing the painting to change when the subject demands it.
Perhaps the Kingdom is ultimately a portrait of the world we have created—and of ourselves as creatures living inside it: part human, part machine, part consumer, part animal, part myth.
Opens Thursday 24th September 2026 6-8pm
