MG+MSUM

Staš Kleindienst, The Triumph of Darkness, 2017, 120 x 130 cm, oil on canvas
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Staš Kleindienst

The Triumph of Darkness

2017, 120 x 130 cm, oil on canvas

 

Over the last few years, Staš Kleindienst has developed a complex type of painting that simulates the all-seeing eye of God through the use of a bird’s eye view. In such pictorial fields, the artist is developing a model of a fantasy landscape that bears “the potential to address power relations, the (sub)conscious and the social imaginary” (S. Kleindienst). This fantasy world is full of diverse situations reflecting a wide range of themes, from naturalizing bizarre local or national cultural or social rituals to environmentalism, the culture of surveillance, corporate power and its mechanisms of privatizing public space, constructing local or national identity, xenophobia, escape into privacy, etc. These are paintings of a very colorful world, full of action and enigmatic detail, yet one cannot shake the feeling of a grotesque claustrophobia and absurdity. 

 

 

Staš Kleindienst (born 1979) finished his BA in painting in 2007 and MA in fine art in 2009 at the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2014 he won the OHO Group Award, the main national visual arts award for young visual artists. He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Web: https://www.staskle.com