Horizons of expectations
Matej Čepin's paintings are gateways to landscapes where time seems to stand still and the lives of people and plants can hardly be perceived. They look like frozen photographs or movie frames of human figures looking towards yet past us.
The paintings on display at the retrospective exhibition were created in the period 2018–2023. The landscapes are populated by humans living in solitude and together all at once. The author returns to landscape painting. Horizons splitting the Earth and the sky are a common motif in his recent artwork.
Endlessness is the key visual representation that implies freedom as a metaphor for infinity and also hope. Not just because of the landscapes with distant horizons, but also because of the various ways of portraying space in its infiniteness. These motifs usually depict urban and natural spaces at the same time, i.e. lone buildings or a circus tent popping out in the middle of a natural setting. They are even more lonesome than the people in the paintings. The buildings seem abandoned amid almost lifeless landscapes with greyish skies.
Also in those paintings are leafless trees and, surprisingly, blooming plants. Everything gives an impression of ending, but also expectation and knowledge of what is happening and what is to come. As for light, it follows the general mood of the artwork: it is subdued and seems impassable. The world is waiting for a new spring.
Miloš Bašin

“All the events unfolding before my eyes make me feel like I’m on a merry-go-round, I’m experiencing some sort of dizziness and vertigo. This takes place while the data is entering my body, duplicating and multiplying as a kind of a (computer) virus, reproducing and phantasmagorically copulating to provide their master with the desired production and reproduction. The lying, sombre master who insists on breaking into the world, into my world, tailoring it, forcing his ideas, shaping it according to his own patterns.”
Matej Čepin

Matej Čepin was born in 1977 in Celje. He works in painting and is an active member of the contemporary Slovenian visual arts scene. He acquired the status of self-employed professional in culture in 2017. Čepin has held several solo exhibitions. He lives and works in Celje.

Exhibitions
Galerija Alkatraz ( 2013), MMC Kibla, Maribor, Prečudoviti vrtovi gospe R. (2015), in Naslednji dan (2020/2021),Galerija Murska Sobota, Kje smo zdaj (2016), Likovni salon Celje, Para-Noir (2016), Galerija Plevnik-Kronkowska (2015), Kvartirna hiša Celje (2015), Celje, Kvartirna hiša Celje, Vrnitev (2019), Galerija Generali Ljubljana, Naslednji dan: Hudobna zahodna vešča (2022), Galerija Ravne, Srečni dnevi ( 2022).  Celje (2023), Kvartirna hiša Celje, Od koder prihajamo, ptice pojejo lepo pesem. Matej Čepin je razstavljal tudi na pomembnih skupinskih razstavah, med drugimi v Novem Sadu (Srb), v Muzeju savremene umetnosti Vojvodine (2017), Trieste / Trst (Ita), Lux Art Gallery, Center sodobnih umetnosti Celje, Galerija Murska Sobota, Nezaslišani svet, ki ga imam v glavi. Metamodernizem in metaromantika v slovenskem slikarstvu, v Slovenj Gradcu, Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti (2019), MIG 21 v Kibla Portal, Maribor (2016), Pogledu 8 v Lamutovem Likovnem salona v Kostanjevici na Krki ( 2016), Mestna galerija Nova Gorica, Slikarstvo zdaj! Slovenija ( 2021), Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Momental-mente (2022), Ljubljana, Muzeji in galerije mesta Ljubljane - Cukrarna, Figuralika (2023).