Žiga Korent – Parallel Worlds

Žiga Korent (1984) graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering in Ljubljana, specializing in textile and clothing design (Prof. Marija Jenko). He continued his studies at the University of Vienna in the field of cognitive science, focusing primarily on design theory. He is active in various fields, from painting, photography, and graphic design to illustration. In 2023 he completed his master’s degree (MA) in painting at the School of Drawing and Painting in Ljubljana under Professor Mladen Jernejec. He regularly exhibits his work in both group and solo exhibitions.

In his transposition of individual excerpts from reality onto the canvas, Korent remains firmly anchored in the figure/object—so firmly that he emphasizes the figurative to the point where space itself ceases to be important. The space surrounding the figures or objects becomes an imaginary landscape, filled with strong and dense layers of color.

Through his excerpts of mostly pleasant everyday moments—emerging from vibrating masses of color that add dynamism to the scene—Korent offers his own ideal vision of society. At the same time, this can also be “read” as a critique of something that, within the dynamics of daily life, increasingly becomes more the exception than the rule. In his recent series, the backgrounds are becoming more tangible, as Korent understands art as something that must be clearly seen and felt, without unnecessary verbosity—accessible both to the casual viewer and the trained, art-sensitive eye. A constant in his work remains his now-distinctive purified and striking color palette, for as he himself says, it is no longer only that color surrounds the figure—color speaks through it, becoming its tissue, its skin, its inner voice.

The exhibition curator is Saša Bučan.