LUKA ŠIROK: NOTHING PERSONAL –
Solo exhibition |
13. 3. 2026 – 2. 5.2026, Meduza Gallery Koper |
Opening: 13 March 2026, at 6 p.m.
Curator: Tina Jazbec.
Luka Širok, Ups migrants, part 2, 2023, acryilic on canvas, photo: Gaflab.
Luka Širok is among the more prominent visual artists of the intermediate generation in the Goriška region. He completed his painting studies in 2007 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia), and has since exhibited regularly in solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia, Italy, and abroad. In the past he collaborated with the artistic associations Attivarte and SPA+A in Venice; he is currently a member of the Fondazione Malutta in Venice and of DLUSP Ajdovščina. He works in a range of visual media—such as collage, drawing, installation, and combinations of these—but his practice is primarily oriented toward painting. At the Piran Coastal Galleries he is presenting for the first time the painting series I’m fine paintings from 2023 and You? Me! from 2024. Both series are being shown for the first time, brought together under the shared title Nothing personal.
“I’m fine” is the most common answer to the question: “How are you?”. In the painting series bearing this title, we follow small human tragedies—fragments of everyday life—unfolding in a sparsely defined space, traced only by beams of light and a few scenic details, such as restaurant tables, tree trunks, or car headlights. Human figures, reduced to basic outlines, seem—despite the small format—lost at the center of a vast, almost monochrome world. For us, the action is merely an intriguing episode, a miniature stage scene we watch with a voyeuristic gaze, whether it concerns personal distress, longing, or a global refugee crisis. The visually palpable silence in these paintings speaks of all those segments of daily life that we fold into the neutral reply: I’m fine.
Speaking about the painting series You? Me!, Luka Širok says: “It shifts the focus to the individual, to the search for light and understanding it. Light becomes a metaphor for discovery but also for greed: something people admire, use, and ultimately discard.” The constant human need to prove oneself—to surpass oneself and others—and, on the other hand, the irrelevance of these personal feats and efforts for society at large, forms the framework of this series. The dominant, at times hostile landscape in which our heroes struggle, in some cases draws everyone present into an almost abstract fusion of light and darkness.
Luka Širok stands out as an exceptional storyteller: with minimal visual means—and with vivid titles for individual paintings—he unfolds before us a spectrum of stories and events marked by comedy or tragedy, sometimes by both at once. The anecdotes condense episodes, impressions, and memories of the author, real or fictional. For the viewer, a certain distance from what is depicted is necessary so that it does not become personal—so that it does not touch us and, consequently, transform us. In this context, Nothing personal is an ironic label for a condition that is, for the protagonists of the painted stories, profoundly personal. Irony softens the boundaries between empathy and indifference and reminds us that what seems neutral can become personal. Nothing personal is therefore not only a statement, but a state of mind—of the individual as well as of society.
Tina Jazbec
