Chaos After Kaos

Although I had previously collaborated with the festival and exhibited a large installation at the Layer Gallery, both my proposals for The Magic Mushroom Spirit (a 3D assemblage) and One Day Tenderness Will Move the World (a digital collage) were unexpectedly declined.

In response, I created and installed 108 printed images of these rejected works throughout the city – in front of and inside the gallery, as well as on surrounding urban structures. Alongside these prints, I inscribed in white chalk fragments of Oscar Wilde’s Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The intervention, carried out one day after the festival’s opening and later completed with the ZEN+ team, turned absence into presence: an ephemeral act of resistance and tenderness, reclaiming public space for art beyond institutional borders.

On June 1st, 2024, I carried out an independent art intervention in the city center of Kranj, Slovenia, as a response to being rejected from the Kaos Festival.

Born from rejection, this art intervention unfolded through 108 prints and chalked words of Oscar Wilde across the streets of Kranj. The Magic Mushroom Spirit, One Day Tenderness Will Move the World, and Famous Slovenians in Fairytale Form — eighteen national celebrities transformed into fairytale beings — re-emerged as acts of quiet defiance, turning absence into tenderness and art into freedom.

Although I had previously collaborated with the festival and exhibited a large installation at the Layer Gallery, both my proposals for The Magic Mushroom Spirit (a 3D assemblage) and One Day Tenderness Will Move the World (a digital collage) were unexpectedly declined.

In response, I created and installed 108 printed images of these rejected works throughout the city – in front of and inside the gallery, as well as on surrounding urban structures. Alongside these prints, I inscribed in white chalk fragments of Oscar Wilde’s Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The intervention, carried out one day after the festival’s opening and later completed with the ZEN+ team, turned absence into presence: an ephemeral act of resistance and tenderness, reclaiming public space for art beyond institutional borders.

Born from rejection, this art intervention unfolded through 108 prints and chalked words of Oscar Wilde across the streets of Kranj. The Magic Mushroom Spirit, One Day Tenderness Will Move the World, and Famous Slovenians in Fairytale Form — eighteen national celebrities transformed into fairytale beings — re-emerged as acts of quiet defiance, turning absence into tenderness and art into freedom.

They said no.
Art said — watch me.

Sometimes rejection becomes the beginning — 108 prints, one city, and the quiet voice of art that refuses to disappear.

From chaos to tenderness — the spirit of the mushroom, the whisper of Wilde, and fairytales walking the streets of Kranj.

One day, tenderness will move the world. Maybe that day begins here.