Vladimir Leben & Ercigoj Art

A Dog’s Life

embroidered painting detail, 2013

The triptych A Dog’s Life depicts stray dogs of Moscow that depend on city residents for food. The work – embroidered paintings produced by Vladimir Leben and Ercigoj Art – takes its inspiration from a newspaper article about these urban canine foragers that ride the subway from the suburbs on a daily basis, commuting downtown “for a living.” Developed by Ercigoj Art in collaboration with several Slovene and foreign artists, embroidery as a medium of artistic expression is rather a novelty both in Slovenia and around the world. The triptych of paintings is accompanied by a bench executed in the same technique, with all of the pieces taken together comprising an installation of a subway platform. Aldo Kumar’s soundscape underscores the effect.

Vladimir Leben (born in 1971) grew up in Sevnica, Slovenia. He studied at the Secondary School of Design and Photography and then the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He has exhibited at solo and group shows at home and abroad; one of his most acclaimed (collaborative) projects was Galapagos. He is a co-founder of the Museum of Too Modern Art. He works in painting, animation and illustration. In 2007 he received first prize for animation at the 10th Festival of Slovene Film in Portorož, and in 2012 the Hinko Smrekar Award at the 10th Slovene Biennial of Illustration. He lives and works in Ljubljana.