13th Exhibition of paintings by Meta Šolar: Identity of the figure

The visual poetics of academic painter Meta Šolar navigate within the realm of figuration. The artist approaches it in a sensitive, socially relevant, and notably introspective manner. Her exploration into the world of figures was propelled by an investigation into human identity in the contemporary digital age, along with the examination of relationships and psychological states. Here, she seeks answers to questions about self-awareness and the discovery of one’s own identity. On the level of artistic realization, she embarks on her own artistic path to test and present executional uniqueness within traditional easel painting, using oil and acrylic techniques. This method of visual expression remains current and powerful, allowing her to infuse classical elements with her own artistic bravado, revealing her thoughts, perspectives, and experiences in an individual manner. In doing so, she has evolved into a creator of modern new figuration, establishing an original relationship with pop-artistic and surrealist tendencies.

For the protagonists and conversational partners in her works, she almost always selects female figures, whether real individuals or imaginatively created. She depicts them in a real, recognizable form, following the canon of classical figurative representation. She consistently and precisely delineates their physical characteristics, shaping them in clear and identifiable presence. However, the artist’s creative journey does not end here, as her thoughts and ideas call her towards concealed figuration, towards depersonalizing the figure. Most frequently, she conceals the faces of her subjects, omitting crucial facial identification details, adorning them with “masks,” and choosing various other covering elements. Variations in this direction are original, imaginative, and meaningful, including depictions of figures from their back. This approach makes the characters explicitly unknown, mysterious, and surreal.

Meta Šolar’s creative journey continues, and in her iconography, she introduces new motifs. In her latest paintings, she places the figure primarily in relation to the natural environment, the plant world, and even the animal kingdom. While some works feature vegetation with botanical precision, their coloristic evaluation is far from realistic. The artist employs unique chromatic values, opting for strong violet, pink, green, and blue hues. In this way, she gives a synthetic appearance to the natural, turning the real into the unreal and leading scenes back into her own surrealistic direction, characterized by a distinctive atmosphere, even a fairytale ambiance.

Her works are dynamically alive. She is interested in the texture of the application, using layers of color, combining thoughtful and disciplined strokes with dynamic and even relaxed traces, adding pulsating and segmented elements to continuous strokes. The latest works bring a special freshness through fluid, relaxed drawing. This is primitive, unrestrained, uncensored, artistically intimate traces, realized in contrasting color. It is like an instantly realized emotional response, a concentrate of artistic energy, and simultaneously a connecting element of scenes. Throughout, she embraces color diversity and dynamic, even unusual color confrontations. The uniqueness of color concepts is also exploited for transitions into the unnatural, as well as for associative and metaphorical content accents. While adhering to the solidity of the internal pictorial structure, the artist is increasingly intrigued by the question of the boundary of the image. The inner boundary she creates serves as the role of the window frame. In this way, the painter establishes a “reflection” of external and internal space. The relationship between the external and internal, the visible and invisible contingents of her scenes, reality and her own imagination, is present throughout her oeuvre, and it seems that she has now found an interesting visual-formal solution for her intellectual transitions.

In her figurative compositions, the artist also grapples with the phenomenon of the viewer’s gaze. Through what is spoken and articulated, she allows the viewer to open their own window of perception and experience these unique scenes.

Meta Šolar proves that purely painterly art has not lost its allure, maintaining a pedestal position amidst a multitude of images processed in various ways. It demonstrates a kind of timelessness in the “classic” sense. She shows that the figure is by no means a painterly anachronism but remains an autonomous artistic genre that allows the universal to become personal, the invisible to become visible, and the sensuous to be synthesized into the painter’s toolkit. Despite everything already seen, she succeeds in summoning the human figure into a new visual and content-conveying life, giving it its own “face” and expression, breathing more life into it.

Anamarija Stibilj Šajn, Art historian

About the author

Meta Šolar (1989) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2014.

In her artistic endeavors, she primarily focuses on figurative art bordering on surrealism. She poses questions about contemporary culture and identity in the digital age, leading her work to constantly evolve. Scientific knowledge, mysticism, and art history serve as her sources of inspiration. Motifs from various domains converge within the framework of the human figure, particularly the female figure, which represents the focal point of her production. Her acrylic and oil works often consist of layers of different images, intertwining and inviting the viewer to unravel them.

Šolar actively exhibits her works in Slovenia and internationally. She has participated in international group exhibitions in London, Italy, and Japan. Additionally, she has presented solo works in over twenty exhibitions, including at the Korotan Gallery in Vienna. In 2016, she undertook a one-month artistic residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

For her contributions, Šolar has received several awards, including the 2019 jury award at ArtOlympia in Tokyo and the 2023 Kras Society Award at Eks-tempore Kras.