The artist’s work opens a contemplative space to meditate on the dream of human completeness, built upon an exploration of the extreme states of our mind. Through symbolically rich works and narrative titles, he addresses themes that touch upon the existential struggle and fragile experience of the human psyche. The protagonists of this investigation are the liminal states of being in the world – anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, feelings of meaninglessness, and alienation from everyday life – constructed through a multifaceted understanding of the artistic mediums of painting, drawing, and installation. Works such as My Body Decays so I Hate Time and Will Be Unfaithful to My Father and Angst of Post-Industrial Men under Late Capitalism delve into the tensions experienced by the modern individual, caught between societal norms, technological dependence, and the transience of the human body. Here, the artist’s focus extends beyond individual experiences to raise pressing questions about the relationship between the individual and the world, where internal conflicts and external pressures are inextricably intertwined. His installations and moving objects are built on a primal understanding of technology as an unconscious extension of the human body, highlighting the mental dissonances created by our (inter)dependence on machines and the digital realm. His work opens a space for reflection, allowing viewers to explore their own relationships with social structures, corporeality, and mental states through the ironic lens of his creative expression.

In his work, the artist establishes a connection with the writings of the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, particularly The Divided Self, in which Laing examines schizoid individuals. His premise is that the schizoid experience is not necessarily solely pathological. Instead, he identifies its potential positive aspects, as it offers insight into alternative ways of perceiving reality that do not rely exclusively on conventional medical criteria of the individual’s sovereignty. Laing highlights two approaches to interpreting phenomena: an adaptive and a dysfunctional one. While the former entails experiencing and interpreting the world in a manner that facilitates effective engagement in everyday life, aligned with social expectations and personal experiences of reality, the latter transcends conventional boundaries and often involves unusual and abstract mental connections. These, however, can be so intense or radical that they hinder the individual’s ability to function and connect to daily life. In his view, such borderline states reveal a unique openness to alternative ways of being. Laing emphasises that schizoid individuals often develop a sense of separation from their own bodies and surroundings, leading to a feeling of detachment from reality. The artist expands on this notion by reflecting on the fragmentation of contemporary society, where tools, especially technological ones, established norms, and symbolic systems often construct a misaligned defensive mechanism for the individual intended to shield them from existential anxiety. In his work, he draws our attention to the fact that these numerous adaptations, expansions, and deepening layers of the individual’s state offered by society are frequently imposed and crudely implemented. This, in turn, generates a core sense of non-integration not only within society but, more crucially, within one’s own body.

The connection between social constructs and human perception is understood by the artist through John Searle’s work The Construction of Social Reality. Searle points out that many concepts considered “natural”, for example money, laws, or property, exist solely due to collective agreement on symbolic systems that we maintain. The artist recognises these constructs as essential for navigating the modern world, however, he also emphasises that they often obscure our biological and psychological vulnerability. Digital environments, built upon these symbolic systems, create an illusion of safety and control, yet this illusion frequently leads to alienation from one’s physicality and community. Contemporary society deepens this divide, as individuals constantly oscillate between the desire for autonomy and the need for belonging. This paradox is manifested in a heroic striving for self-validation and power alongside fear of exposure and vulnerability. Digital environments offer a semblance of security, where individuals construct flawed imaginary structures and fantasy worlds, however, this illusion quickly becomes paradoxical. The very sense of power and freedom deprives individuals of authentic contact with reality, where poorly delineated boundaries between self and object, and between simulation and reality, create a state in which they feel as though performing an act, all the while being trapped in the undeniable biological truth of their own mortality.

It is essential to understand these criteria and mechanisms of judgment within a broader context of predictive processing, as introduced by Anil Seth in Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Seth argues that perception is not a direct insight into objective reality but rather a construct of brain models built upon past experiences, expectations, and sensory input. This constant prediction and adjustment of information from the environment create what Seth terms a controlled hallucination, enabling the continuous calibration of internal models for experiencing the world. Useful information aligns with expectations, whereas mismatched or unforeseen data lead to adjustments of these internal models, misinterpretations, or, in extreme cases, profound psychophysiological inconsistencies. Such inconsistencies include illusions, where erroneous expectations dominate sensory input, fantasies, where internal models grow disproportionate and produce perceptions disconnected from reality, or states of paranoia and anxiety, where heightened sensitivity to these prediction errors generates a pervasive sense of threat or uncertainty.

Through his works, the artist explores states of alienation and the illusion of control, encouraging viewers to confront their own perceptions of the world and self. His art creates a space for reflection on how psychological and social mechanisms shape our experiences, offering insight into the gap between internal and external realities. In this process, he highlights that vulnerability is not a weakness, but rather a driving force of human creativity and an opportunity to contemplate not only the limitations, but also the excessive dimensions we impose on our own consciousness. The concept of the executive hero and ruler of one’s existence is not merely a quantitative question of capability or the endless search for purpose in all aspects of life. It is equally about embracing the essential, unburdened dream of being in the here and now.

The exceptional quality of the artist’s works lies primarily in understanding the profound position they occupy within a broader framework of contemporary art. Seth’s concept of controlled hallucinations, when placed in the context of recognising the artistic nature of any work of art, highlights the capacity of artistic objects and phenomena to actively adapt our experience of being in the world and to encompass our fundamental mechanisms of exploring and asserting one’s sovereignty. Unlike the commonly acknowledged functionalist perspective of reality, an artistic object demands an altered mode of experiencing – similar to Laing’s investigation of schizoid perception, yet situated in a significantly more controlled and safe environment. Understanding the materiality of the artist’s works does not require more than recognising the depicted forms, colours, and other physical properties that allow one to conclude, for instance, that one is observing a painting, a drawing, or an installation composed of particular motifs. However, the recognition of the artistic quality of the work – the actual essence of what makes us perceive an object as a work of art – necessitates a broader, unencumbered mode of perception. If the former is built on the pragmatic constraints imposed by our brains to enable effective functioning, the latter is entirely unconstrained – the boundaries of its meaning are limited only by our capacity to experience the world. To experience it in the widest possible sense, which not only includes the limits of our language, often considered the foundational framework for interpreting artistic phenomena, but also inherently involves the boundaries of our sensory and emotional perception. Only such a comprehensive definition can genuinely serve to establish the position and clear purpose of art in the contemporary world.

And herein lies the excellence of the artist’s production, in which he polarises profoundly complex and highly relevant states of existence of modern humans, yet constructs them within a refined and, above all, accessible visual language. This formal simplicity, the seemingly sketch-like naiveté of his expression, which initially appears deceptively simple, reflects a deep understanding of the content he explores and conveys: the dimensions of human complexity and vulnerable existence in a perpetually and ungraspably terrifying world of the Other, whose ontology can never be separated from one’s own, regardless of whether one is able to recognise its inherent inseparability. A human being who spends a lifetime hallucinating violently imposed mechanisms of self-defence in the form of an endless expedition of progress, with no possible destination to arrive to. An existence to which divine proportions are ascribed – whether in the context of faith or science – without the ability to distinguish between its capability and its function. And a language, which, in its barbarity, is incapable of unveiling the reality in which it resides.

To render unto man the things which are man’s – only so much as to allow him to at least dream of the boundless fields of Elysium.

Matej Tomažin