Matic Flajs works in the field of illustration, graphic design, painting and art publications. His art practice is inspired by the skateboard and punk subculture, which is rooted in spontaneity, boundary-pushing and the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos. All this has had a significant impact on the artist’s creative process, which is distinguished by improvisation, experimentation, a playful approach to established methods, as well as the development of his own pictorial language and expression.

Even though Matic Flajs works across various media, he primarily identifies as an illustrator. Drawing, therefore, forms the foundation of his art practice, formally defined by stylisation, a spontaneous and fluid line, isolated motifs and the use of comic book elements. In terms of content, his work features motifs from pop and subculture, fantastical and at times eerie characters, and (black) humour. In building up his compositions, he effortlessly combines realistic and abstract elements, precision of detail with a nonchalance of the overall plane, while counting on contrasting effects in his handling of colour and arrangement of light and shadow.

In this exhibition entitled Phases; rave, the artist presents a selection of works from his production of the past few years. On display are prints produced in the intaglio technique, screenprints, paintings and drawings, each body of work in its own way highlighting seriality, variation or phase development. At the heart of the exhibition, therefore, lies the creative process itself as a sequence of phases through which the image gradually takes shape. Within this framework, particular emphasis is placed on the artist’s decision regarding the final version, which may emerge at any stage of the process. In this sense, each phase represents an exploration of the same motif across different pictorial contexts, techniques and supports, and, in the case of printmaking, above all, through the different stages of preparing the matrix and producing the print.

The exhibition as a whole offers insight into the artist’s creative process, where music, subculture and visual art intertwine, as well as into the work process itself, which shows itself as a sequence of experiments, decisions and reflections on the question of when an artwork is actually finished. With the exhibition title, which refers to mass dance events with electronic music, the artist affirms that the creative process also involves considerable pleasure and joy, perhaps extending an invitation for us to join him in this experience.

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Matic Flajs (1994) completed his studies at the Secondary School of Design and Photography in Ljubljana, specialising in graphic design, before continuing at the Faculty of Design in Ljubljana. He has put on solo shows at the DobraVaga gallery in Ljubljana (2019, 2024) and Street Gallery in Belgrade (2024), among others, and has also been included in the selected group exhibition Prints and Impressions 2 at MGLC Ljubljana (2022) and the 10th Biennial of Slovenian Independent Illustration in Ljubljana (2025). In 2019, Flajs co-founded the art collective Sreda v sredo (SVS) with Urban Cerjak and Žiga Artnak. The group participated in the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2023), where it received the Audience Award.
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