Jože Slak - Đoka was one of the key figures in Slovenian visual art in the late 20th century. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, he went to live in the United States for a while in the early 1980s, working there as a carpenter. This experience crucially marked his art, which is often associated with the American “Bad Painting” trend that deliberately challenged traditional notions of what is aesthetic and conventionally artistic.
Đoka incorporated elements from marginalized fields such as kitsch, graffiti, and subcultures in his paintings to both emphasize their artistic value and react to the social reality of the time. His work “Povšetova must be fri” thus reflects his interest in urban subcultures such as graffiti, punk, and Rastafari. The title refers to Povšetova Street in Ljubljana, famous for the fact that the city prison is located there, which is an immediate reference to the margins of society. This effect is underscored in the painting by the broken glass, the speeding squad car, the urinating dog, and the dilapidated, graffiti-covered walls.
The central graffiti on the wall in the painting is not merely a decorative element, but conveys an important message, just like real-life graffiti that are often ironic, cynical, or rebelliously critical of society. Đoka’s works engage in dialog with urban reality, and his artistic provocations rank him among artists who explore the relationship between high(brow) art and popular culture. In addition to their expressive contents, his paintings are also “objects for viewing” in which wood plays an important part. The pictorial field is often second to the motif, like in his “carved paintings,” an example of which is the Falkland Fish also displayed in this room.
