Evgen Čopi Gorišek (b. 1994) is a Slovenian painter from Piran with no formal art training, based in Berlin since 2019. He has exhibited with König Galerie in Berlin and Woaw Gallery in Hong Kong, which held his solo show “Paradise Lost and Found” in 2023. In acrylic, spray paint and oil stick, his vivid scenes of boxers, bodybuilders and poolside bathers fuse graffiti with a faux-naïf style, their uniform smiles masking sadness or anger.
Evgen Čopi Gorišek (b. 1994, Slovenia) is a Slovenian painter who grew up in the coastal town of Piran. He had no formal art education: after an adolescence focused on sport, he was drawn to art by an elementary-school teacher and by an exhibition of pop art featuring Warhol, Basquiat and Lichtenstein. His early work moved from emulating Basquiat towards street art and graffiti, and after five years in Ljubljana he relocated to Berlin in 2019, where he developed his signature style. Working with acrylic, spray paint and oil stick, he paints figures – bathers by the pool, boxers, bodybuilders – whose bodies, clothing and accessories are rendered with concrete, three-dimensional presence while their faces are reduced to blurred, simplified smiles. The uniform smile is central to his work: in his words, people smile but inside they are often sad, unhappy or angry and are hiding it. His colour-intensive compositions combine the vocabulary of graffiti with a faux-naïf, childlike arrangement and comment on mass culture, social media and the lack of authentic communication. He has exhibited with galleries including König Galerie in Berlin, Vroom & Varossieau in Amsterdam and Woaw Gallery in Hong Kong, and has shown in cities such as Milan, New York, Miami and Seoul. In 2023 Woaw Gallery presented his solo exhibition “Paradise Lost and Found” in Hong Kong. The painting “Let Me Love Tonight” (2022), acrylic, spray paint and oil stick on linen, 190 × 160 cm, sourced from Woaw Gallery, Hong Kong, is offered by TUMO Gallery.
