2012 – 2018, studied in the Studio of Hung Paintings and Table Paintings at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. 2024 and 2026, a finalist in the Painting Competition.

Ľubomír Mati graduated in restoration, which is naturally projected onto his painting language also. Characteristic features of his art are meticulous construction of the composition, precise work with the technique of oil painting, sensitive use of complementary contrasts, and especially the thorough layering of glazed and pastose colour deposits. The gradual process of building the painterly substance, based on almost invisible brushstrokes, reflects his respect for the medium and its technological potential. In his art Mati is concerned principally with the human being, his/her inner world and standing in contemporary society, and the relationships that form his/her identity. He conceives of painting as a space for profound thought and concentration, and he thinks of time spent in the studio as an opportunity to seek and to pose questions, but above all to keep on developing his own painterly language. In terms of images, he works with spread-out figures, often captured in motion and without firm contours, thus reflecting the mutability and uncertainty of the contemporary world. Mati’s work connects with the tradition of painting – from Renaissance doctrine to modern art. He is fascinated by the precision of the Old Masters, and equally by the thinking of 20th century artists, in particular Lucian Freud, with his ability via painting to explore the complexity of human existence.  

Mati’s final entry Buffer (2026) reflects the experience of a person living in an environment of constant information overload. He points to a present-day paradox: the more data we produce about our lives, the fewer authentic memories we manage to preserve. The title of the work refers to a state between storage and loss: an imaginary       sorting memory in the human mind, which under pressure of the incessant flow of information is compelled constantly to transcribe its own experience with new digital layers. This idea is projected into the actual process of creating the painting. The work has come into being by a progressive layering and repeated overpainting, with each new layer of colour transforming and partially occluding the preceding. The painterly process thus becomes analogous to the functioning of memory in the digital age, when new information items constantly extrude the older, while at the same time leaving their traces in the picture.