Jernej Forbici: Damn hunger for gold

Jernej Forbici: Damn hunger for gold
29 August–27 September 2025
MMC KIBLA/KiBela

You are cordially invited to the Jernej Forbici's solo exhibition entitled Damn hunger for gold, which will take place on Friday, 29 August 2025, at 7 p.m. at KiBela, space for art.

Jernej Forbici has always had a strong connection with nature, which comes through in his paintings. Beyond his personal ecological and political reflections, which we have become accustomed to over the years, one gets the impression that this impulse is innate and that he often takes pleasure in being at the centre of a grandiose spectacle: nature.

His attentive gaze shuns the rhetoric of the visible and becomes a translator of the reality of the contemporary world, made up of great changes and alienating situations, in order to experience the essence of things.

In his latest, medium and large-format canvases we see all the restlessness of beauty, disorder and chaos in nature.

Through the ancient technique of gold leaf, the use of traditional painting methods, strong colours and petrol, playing with transparencies and matter, he opens up to the contemporary. He continuously observes and records the changes and new scenarios that our environment is undergoing today.

The intriguing landscapes that extend from top to bottom, often horizontally as if to embrace reality, become vast fields where man is not a simple inhabitant or moved spectator but the parasite responsible for the drama of everyday life.

And so, as in a painting, Forbici's nature speaks to us of modern man, capable of finding beauty in disorder and chaos... and we can do nothing but listen attentively...

Biography

Jernej Forbici was born in 1980 in Maribor (Slovenia). He graduated in painting (with honors) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice under Professor Carlo Di Raco, and then received a master's degree in visual and performing arts. Since 1999, his works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in various European countries, the USA, Canada, Argentina, and China. He has been invited to participate in the following biennials: Hicetnunc, Pordenone (2003), IBCA, International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Prague, German Pavilion (2005), Accade, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), 54th Venice Biennale, Accademie Pavilion (2011). In 2009, the aforementioned Academy of Fine Arts in Venice dedicated a retrospective to Jernej Forbici at the Magazzini del Sale gallery, curated by Carlo Di Raco. In 2011, after publishing his first monograph and presenting five retrospectives in Italy and Slovenia, he was invited to participate in the exhibition Il fuoco della natura in Trieste. In 2012, he received a scholarship from the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and was invited to a residency in London, where he dedicated himself to the study of English masters. Between 2013 and 2018, he presented various projects in private galleries and public institutions in Italy and abroad (Venice, Varese, Milan, Latina, Piacenza, Montesarchio, Vienna, Maribor and Luxembourg). In 2017, he carried out the project Before It Comes Next, which was exhibited at the Romberg Gallery in Latina, in 2018 the project Welcome to the Final Show at the Punto Sull'Arte Gallery in Varese and the Ptuj City Gallery in Slovenia, and in 2019 his works were exhibited for the first time in New York at the solo exhibition Long Gone at the Hugo Galerie (NYC). His works play a central role in the art world on an international level, being present today in numerous exhibitions, fairs, institutions, and collections. He currently lives and works between Strnišče (SI) and Vicenza (IT).

https://jernejforbici.com/

< Jernej Forbici: A big pile of garbage, 2020, acrylic and oil on canvas, 286 x 196 cm

MMC KIBLA/KiBela, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor
Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.