BIO

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. In 2019 he received the Highest Artistic Title of the University of Ljubljana. In 2023 he received the Rihard Jakopič Award, the highest national award for achievements in fine and visual arts in Slovenia. He lives and works in Vipava, Slovenia.

WORK AT THE EXHIBITION

Spring on the Plateau, 2024
oil on canvas

Tourists 8, 2020
oil on canvas

Sediments, 2023
oil on canvas

My painting practice focuses on issues related to social rituals and the production of a collective identity. I am interested in landscape as a genre which not only represents reality, but is, importantly, also its fictional extension and has the potential to address relationships among power, the (sub)consciousness and social imaginary. I base my paintings on everyday events, memories of fleeting landscapes and their atmospheric characteristics, which are recently taking an increasingly central role in my compositions.