Evgen Čopi Gorišek’s paintings capture life in the digital age. He creates luxurious scenes of people wrapped in designer clothes, and paints people as if they are always posing for a photo. Despite their glamor, their faces tell a different story. They have an uneasy grimace, disconnecting them from their surroundings. By using an airbrush, Čopi Gorišek gives the figures a photorealistic quality. The backgrounds are then filled in with oil sticks, creating smooth, flat color. Above all, the paintings poke fun at our obsession with self- improvement. He adopts the visual language of consumer culture, but subverts it in a faux-naif, or false-naive, style. Taking inspiration from the lifestyle and self-improvement images on social media, Gorišek uses sunbathers and bodybuilders as examples of the modified body. He exposes this drive for perfection as futile, and laughs at all things aspirational.

Pascal MÖHLMANN

Zurich based artist Pascal Möhlmann sits somewhere between the Louvre and social media. He is known for his reinterpretation of classical painting laden with the motifs of the modern age. Akin to the modern Neue Wilde or the traditional perfectionism of the old masters, Möhlmann’s distinctive style, “New Beauty,” sees the beauty of nature and the body in a contemporary landscape. His combination of “tradition” with current culture is a reminder of life, a reassurance that the present is just as valid as the past. Even as culture has shifted towards the digital, Möhlmann affirms the tensions of the time by visually appreciating the world through the eyes of the masters.