TEMPO, TEMPO
BAŽATO GALLERY, LJUBLJANA, SI
FEB - MAR, 2026
The exhibition Tempo, Tempo at the Bažato Gallery in Ljubljana represents an overview of Marko Šajn's works created between 2021 and 2026. A selection of paintings, risograph prints, drawings, and sculptures reveals how his artistic practice gradually developed into a recognizable visual language based on the principles of repetition, the variation of motifs, and consistent reduction of form. The exhibition offers detailed insight into the work of an emerging artist, whose central thematic starting point is interpersonal relationships.
Full text: ENG / SLO
Exhibition video: YouTube
MARKO ŠAJN
KRKA GALLERY, NOVO MESTO, SI
SEP - OCT, 2025
Marko Šajn is an artist who successfully combines his own individuality, dedication to creative work, and deeply ingrained perseverance. He moves confidently across various media, from graphic art to painting and sculpture, which serve as processes for exploring the boundaries between space and the viewer’s perception, with the associative element playing an important role. His oeuvre is marked by the purity of formal language, reduction, deliberateness, and subtle sensitivity. In the creative process, he is primarily interested in the structure of visual language: light, the relationship between color and pictorial surface, lines, and their material and spatial presence (architectural logic), through which he shapes his installations. His spatial solutions often function like drawings in space: precisely measured lines and surfaces create a balance between rational planning and emotional responsiveness. The monochromatic background is not merely a neutral backdrop, but an active element that determines the final appearance of the work. His recognizable visual language is characterized by refined graphic imagery. The works are either vividly colored or constructed from a restrained gray palette. They are often playful, with a visually clear language and emphasized metaphors.
Full text: ENG / SLO
FREE HUGS
KIBELA GALLERY, MARIBOR, SI
1. March - 6. April 2024
In preparing the exhibition, which combines analog painting and sculpture with contemporary digital interfaces, the artist used the free website for his paintings, which generates images with the help of artificial intelligence. The passwords he entered often contained the words “hug”, “group hug”, “embrace”, etc. Based on this and other online data, he received images according to which he modeled his paintings. However, the machine processing led to various deformations, which he had to rework and edit. His work can therefore be defined as a visualization of communication in a triangle between “machine” and “human” perception of the “conceptual”, which, like interpersonal communication, is never perfect, as it always contains a noise between sender and receiver that depends on various parameters and must be “corrected” again and again.
Full text: ENG / SLO
Exhibition video: YouTube
MUTUAL COMPROMISE
The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), LJUBLJANA, SI
MAR - APR, 2023
The exhibition presents the latest series of prints in silkscreen and riso-printing techniques, as well as a metal object as a special feature of the exhibition. Marko Šajn's prints are characterised by a clear concept and perfect execution, as well as a humorous, funny, fast-paced, witty and playful artistic expression with many references to art history, classical painting, popular printmaking, urban culture, graffiti and street art.
Full text: ENG / SLO
Exhibition video: YouTube
He often depicts human figures in his works, making them easily recogniseable. The figures are extremely stylized, even typified, as they always appear without facial features, having a similar hairstyle and wearing similar clothes. Through them, he is building an undefined space, where the figures take up different positions and allow for different interpretations of emotions and moods, expressed by body posture, gestures and movements. The figures form compositions in which their mutual relations, (common) tendencies and actions are reflected through the visual language of the bodies. In these compositions, the artist keeps the choreography of the movements vague enough to leave the interpretation of the relationships open - namely, it is not always clear whether the figures are friendly or hostile to each other, whether they are playing or fighting, shaking hands or measuring strength, embracing or suffocating... In the face of this ambiguity, it seems that the artist is mainly trying to show the noise in the communication between the depicted figures, as it also often happens in our everyday lives.
EXHIBITION LIST / MEDIA / PUBLICATIONS / WORDS