Maja Šubic: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Maja Šubic: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish*
18 October–16 November 2024
artKIT

We cordially invite you to the opening of the solo exhibition So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish by Maja Šubic, which will take place on Friday, 18 October 2024, at 7 p.m. in the artKIT exhibition space.

INVITATION (PDF)
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION (PDF)

This time we introduce you to one of the rare painters not only in Slovenia, but in the whole of Europe, who works in traditional fresco painting, a historical genre of mural painting that was particularly characteristic of art in and around Škofja Loka in the Middle Ages. Maja Šubic has perfected this old technique and applies it to the present day with extraordinary artistic flair. Her murals embellish many cultural and historical buildings. In the current exhibition in our gallery, she presents paintings on travertine, which was found as waste during the renovation of the congress center in Brdo near Kranj.

Maja Šubic’s works are based on the art of the Middle Ages, in particular on the Bestiary, which she studied as part of her doctoral thesis. Taken out of context, the images take on a new meaning and begin to live an independent story, as the artist creates a consistent spatial arrangement that can fill us with a sense of the sacred and take us back to the past. It can evoke very deep memories, through which we walk with our eyes open until we realize that we are here and now. Then it becomes clear that Maja Šubic is an intergalactic master of space and time travel in the dimensions of our subconscious through the universe of the consciousness of art.

Biography

Maja Šubic was born in Kranj in 1965. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where she graduated in 1990 under Prof. Emerik Bernard. After graduating, she began to focus more intensively on fresco painting. She uses this technique not only for painting on the walls of architectural buildings, but also applies fresh plaster to various portable surfaces – travertine or ceramics. Her great passion is nature and reading natural history and travel literature. For a long time, the main subject of her work was the Darwin family, in particular Charles Darwin's diary The Voyage on the Beagle, which she depicts in various painting techniques (fresco, acrylic, watercolor and, through watercolor illustration, animated film) in numerous projects. In his home town of Shrewsbury, the school Darwin attended celebrated the bicentenary of his birth by commissioning a mural from her.
Recently, Maja Šubic has been working on ancient and medieval natural history, which she interprets in the technique of frescoes on travertine rocks. She also deals with book illustration. She has illustrated several independent book editions, regularly publishes in Slovenian children’s and youth magazines and also works as a screenwriter and illustrator on animated films. She has exhibited independently in Slovenia and other European countries, and her works can be found in many private and state collections. She lives and works in Škofja Loka and Poljane.

* The title is borrowed from the fourth part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Pivec Publishing House, 2015).

< Maja Šubic: Bonding, 2024, fresco on travertine, 27 x 43 x 11 cm; photo: Maja Šubic

artKIT, Glavni trg 14, Maribor
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.