Mandatory Happiness Festival Painting

Born in 1979 in Žilina, Slovakia, Anton Kubalik is an emerging contemporary visual artist investigating the relationship between reality and the digital space. Kubalik graduated in Glass Art from the School of Applied Arts Lednické Rovne in 1996, where he received classical training in drawing and painting techniques. He later continued his master's studies at the Catholic University in Ružomberok in 2004. Kubalik’s passion for painting started at an early age, revealing an innate talent that led him to focus his studies on art. He developed traditional technical skills in oil and acrylic paint while still appreciating the artistic digital realm of graphic design and illustration, taking on several projects for advertising agencies. This experience greatly influenced his artistic practice, leading him to investigate the relationship between classical painting and digital media. In his figurative and landscape paintings, Kubalik blurs the boundaries between the real and the digital. His classical pictorial training is revealed by the soft use of brushes and skillful colour blending, creating warm and cozy layers that give off a sense of certainty and reality to the viewer. However, the first layer is later disrupted by patterns that recall failures in digital signals. Dots and lines are masterfully employed to create an effect of grain texture and digital raster graphics. Kubalik’s art is imbued by multiple sources of inspiration, including literature, classical painting, and current events. On the one hand, his use of dramatic light and chiaroscuro technique takes us back to the old masters of the Baroque art movement, specifically the Italian Caravaggio and the Dutch painter Rembrandt. On the other hand, great modern painters, such as Gerard Ritcher, Max Ernst, and Zbigniew Beksiński, can be seen in the abstract patterns layered on the canvas, adding mystery and a textured disruption of his elegant portraits of female characters and natural landscapes. During his career, Anton Kubalik won the 2001 Art Ruzomberok Award and in 2000 received an award from the Mayor of Liptovský Mikuláš, during the Spring Salon event in Slovakia. After a short break from the Fine Art career, during which he focused on illustration and graphic design projects, Kubalik resumed showcasing his paintings in 2018 and has since then extensively exhibited both in solo shows and group shows in galleries across Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria.