The exhibition’s main questions are: 

1. Is everything ultimately owned?

2. What if humans take AI’s jobs?

3. Can the essence of artwork outlast material decay?

The Miha Artnak (1983) is a Slovenian artist and designer who began his career with graffiti. His first works date back to 2000, when he graffitied Prodigy, Backstreet Boys Rules and a half of the Arthur & Ivek on the walls of Fužine hood on the same day. He embarked on a path of insurgency and social criticism with the graffiti that reads in translation as SLO : FRA – 2 : 3 JUDGE CORRUPTED. In 2001, he co-founded the artistic collective ZEK CREW and shortly afterwards exhibited with it at the International Centre of Graphic Arts. In more than 20 years since their graffiti origins, the collective has settled into conceptual art, out of which The Miha Artnak’s performances are also derived.

He first upset the public with his painting Dove & Peace (2017), which he, according to The Guadrain portal and Slovenian media, supposedly sold for a large sum. His passion for puns and advertising, was brought to life with Bitcoin City (BTC City, 2018), in which he added a new pseudo-digital marketing dimension to an existing Ljubljana-based company. Most recently, he enraged taxpayers with a performative crossing of the road outside a pedestrian crossing (Crossing, 2019), attracted Facebook commentators with pollution as art (Pollutism, 2023), while his utopic project Flat Fiat (2022), in which he placed coins of the world’s leading currencies on the tracks to be run over by a train in order to prevent hyperinflation, managed to impress both at the same time.

The exhibition Owned (2024) at the Match Gallery is concerned with ownership, which the artist The Miha Artnak entitles in different ways throught seven motifs. The painting of a nude, a still life, a landscape, a self-portrait and an animal portrait evoke classical painting, a child’s painting evokes abstract art, and the yellow rectangle representing the solar flag evokes the meme “the masculine urge to make art from flags”.

The Miha Artnak paintings were not painted by him. Is he not able to paint them? Most likely not. Why then a painting exhibition?

The artist selected his motifs, hired a photographer, Klemen Ilovar, to photograph them, and then hired a Chinese painting service where the motifs were painted on canvas by painters Shao M. Zeng, Jim Xing, James Lin, David Lin, Pendy Chen, Cathy Wu, Nane Fang, John Zeng, John Lin, and Max Feng. The technique mimics the process of artificial intelligence (AI) image generation, but this time humans took over the AI’s job.

In the exhibition, you will come across the following expressions: original, unique copy, property, possession, value and certificate. Probably also blockchain and NFT. That is how It is, such is the world we live in, and The Miha Artnak directs our gaze even towards where we do not want to point it ourselves. The paintings differ not only in their motifs, but also in their quantity and the possibility or impossibility of their ownership.

The Figure, Still Life and Animal can be purchased and owned, while Self-portrait, Abstract, Landscape and Monochrome cannot be. All paintings can be possessed, but the Abstract cannot be owned. Monochrome can be downloaded from the internet and reproduced at will, Landscape belongs to everyone in the world, Abstract belongs to no one under the sun. It is a concept of non-ownership, which The Miha Artnak invented precisely for the exhibition at the Match Gallery.

Before you take home the painting that belongs to everyone in the world, remember to align yourself with all the others.

Nika Jurman

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More about the exhibition: https://themihaartnak.com/last