Small but dangers

Natura morta

21. 11. 2025–22. 3. 2026

Grad Tivoli

Small but dangers is a purposefully miswritten paraphrase of the expression, “Small, but dangerous”, which became the throughline, recognisable slogan and name under which the artistic duo of Mateja Rojc and Simon Hudolin operate. Since their first exhibitions in Slovenia in 2004, the well-established artist duo have been presenting various visual jabs that test the thickness of our skin, the folds of our grey matter and above all, our capacity to observe, to read and to seek the unknown in the known. We can label the duo as neo-conceptualists, as well as painters, printmakers or makers of ready-mades with an ironic and analytical approach to the material fragments surrounding us. The exhibition is their largest to date and marks 21 years of their work together. It is full of small things, old and new works, presented to the public for the first time and arranged in such a way as to foster new interrelationships and meanings. With the exhibition, SBD confirm that exhibiting is still only one of the media in which they are active and in which their system of signs can transform into a comprehensive metalanguage about art itself.

A bold thesis, right at the beginning, could be that SBD, in essence, are not Mateja and Simon, but everything between them. SBD is thus a space between two subjects, who give it meaning through their work, and therefore, we cannot assign ownership or authorship to one or the other. It is a space between two lines, between two nails connected with a rope. Is it a space of consensus? Perhaps it was at the beginning, when they decided to work as a tandem. Today, it seems that it has become a space in which they have unanimously decided to unite their differences.

The graphic prints and numerous other works of SBD are both a visualisation of the phrase “between the lines” and its literal pictorial illustration. The lines are laid out in rows; between the lines is a blank space. In literature, the phrase “between the lines” is associated with what is unsaid or unwritten; in the visual arts, it highlights the potential of an empty space. SBD will confront us with the moment when an artist stands before a blank sheet of paper, a blank canvas or a blank space and begins their creative, mental breakthrough to the other side. One such work was literally created by “piercing” a sheet with a needle and thread, in other words, by sewing a pattern into it.

The exhibition also features works from a series of graphic prints, printed in 2016 at the MGLC Graphic Studio under the title Thin line, they can draw your attention into a fantastic world of discovering meanings and connections, uncovering the possibilities of the real and the real made possible in art. The series comprises screen prints depicting blank sheets of paper, the kind we know from various notebooks and journals. The orderly structure of the lined sheet on the graphic print changes into an empty space, ready to collect the viewer's projections and content associations.

The essence of their works always hides between the lines and it’s important that the viewer knows how to read something that is not directly written. To recognise the thought, the situation, or simply to weave a story. There’s plenty of yarn.

"A secret is a secret only as long as it is secret. Just because our works don’t mean anything doesn’t mean that they are without sense. They are tools for poetic thinking. Their effect is like magic." Small but dangers

Curator of the exhibition: Božidar Zrinski

Small but dangers (Mateja Rojc & Simon Hudolin)

Both born in 1977, Mateja Rojc and Simon Hudolin have been creating as the artist duo Small but dangers since 2004, when they presented the exhibition Process at the Cerkno Youth Alternative Club – C.M.A.K. Since then, the two have regularly exhibited their work in solo and group shows at home and abroad; we can also find their works in the collections of Slovenian and international galleries and museums. In 2016 and 2021, they took part in the residency programme of the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), where they printed a series of prints in the MGLC Graphic Studio. They are also involved in the international artist-in-residence cooperation project, Sustainability is in the AiR (SAiR), 2023–2026), led by MGLC. Since 2010, Small but dangers have been represented by Ljubljana’s P74 Gallery.