Gani Llalloshi

This is not T.V.

Gani Llalloshi has been working on popular aesthetics for a long time already. Mostly pop icons and popular trademark signs were involved but never just as images from contemporary life. Instead of that he always pointed out certain issues concerning relationships between aesthetics, popularity and plain thinking. His projects try always to establish a critical attitude towards the space where they reach the audience but the artist veils the criticism behind a pleasant aesthetics in paintings, drawings or prints representing very familiar objects. Two times, in Galerija ZDSLU (Ljubljana) and Insula gallery (Izola) he produced a provocative situation in which the exhibitions were set up establishing a fictive relationship between public associations and private capital interests that somehow reflected particular situation in which an association found itself in that moment.

In the last few years Gani Llalloshi has shown a lot of interest in visual quotation. Looking at works that histories of art and cinema recognised as important obviously drove him to re-think about their values in modern society and not only that. The paintings on his last show titled “This is not TV” literally present another view upon historic images. Paintings that seem to be turned upside down are live evidence of what happens to well known forms through apparently unusual transformation. It is believable that most of people who presently stare at this display have surely met in a variety of views Van Gogh’s Vase with sunflowers or Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam or perhaps even more often subjected to transformations, Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. All these paintings may already enter the category of pop culture and may as well be recognisable as some kind of trademarks that are placed into an environment that provokes an observer to search for images inside own memory. On the other hand the painting titled Big brother is quotation of his own work from about five years ago and with this provocative gesture the artist places himself in some kind of hall of fame.

But what in fact happens to the paintings when they are turned the way they seem to be upside down. Majda Božeglav Japelj in her text in the catalogue mentioned two already historical artists that already did in painting this kind of gesture. One was Vassily Kandinsky who discovered that for his paintings it is quite irrelevant what side is up or down and Baselitz who showed to the world just the opposite - that the subject represented in the painting becomes less relevant if so-to-say standing on its head and the painting becomes more formalistic. Both of them were observing the effect in context of abstraction. Gani Llalloshi took a peculiar but necessary and effective step in this regard if compared to his previous paintings. The artist dramatically reduced his colour palette from rich and colourful to monochromatic, or if we count out the brownish dye, even to black and white technique. Reduction of colours grants clearness to forms and sharpness to images. Even more than they already have because of Llalloshi’s already recognisable style. Beside stated above there is a surprising connection between these paintings and live images in camera obscura. Gottfried Jäger wrote in his text on Karen Stuke’s pinhole photography that a person observing the outside world on an upside down image projected to the wall through a small hole “finally begins to accept this visual headstand and starts to mentally imagine it upright”. And exactly this happens with images in question at the moment. If one spends more than few minutes in front of a painting everything becomes quite natural. Just such details like the tenderness between the heads on Lovers remain unveiled because of formalistic issues the above-mentioned old masters were about. But the most surprising is to me the disappearance of gravity in the images. All the represented objects keep some kind of natural order and firm corporeality. Bodies don’t become weightless ghosts but anyway there is no reverse gravity. Everything seems in its place and careless for our earthy troubles and this brings us to the point where everything started. The author asked himself about the perception of well known images viewed differently as he was used to from books, T.V., internet of other media while he was standing in Sistine Chapel and staring to the ceiling admiring the frescoes on his way out facing them opposite way he was always taught they should be looked at. Let’s mention that Michelangelo painted them between 1508 and 1511 and that ceiling painting after that time took gravitational position of the observer strongly in consideration. This technical shift went into direction of never ending road of more and more realistic representation of euclidic universe, working on appearances that in some way are brought forth in this exhibition. That’s why the author gave it a title that rearticulates Magritte’s negation in representation or said from the other point of view, confirmation of reality through negation. The dialectics works in favour of the artist’s criticism of modern mass media influence to state of mind of society and perhaps we can even sense a hint about the indifference they cause in people. Especially generations to which the author belongs and younger, are deprived of motivations for actions and not just satisfactions.

In the end I just have to ask myself another question but without expecting a prompt answer. While observing the paintings on the show I didn’t notice any demarcation of the right position on the front side of them. Considering the artist’s provocative attitude toward the audience in previous projects even this exhibition may be a provocation. We really can’t be sure that one day Llalloshi won’t turn the paintings upside up only to make us believe that we missed some important point this time or whatever. So just let’s wait and see what will happen in A+A gallery in Venice where the exhibition is moving in the end of March or maybe some time later.

Vasja Nagy

The first visit to this year’s Month of photography i did was attending the opening of the exhibition of Branko Lenart in Galerija Herman Pečarič in Piran. It comes to look obvious that it is written in this post about Lenart’s exhibition who is a Slovene photographer living in Austria but I decided to do it just lately. The major reason for so is to present further the suspicious spots in this festival I wrote about in the previous post.

Branko Lenart is an old school photographer with a vast production an some very interesting achievements in the past. Today it seems like his work is repeating forms and formulas of the old days and (maybe it is just me) real transformation, deconstruction or re-articulation cannot be noticed. Still it wouldn’t be right to neglect his mastery and sensitivity but on the other hand qualitative variability among his photographs should be noted as well because it makes his project not consistent as one would expect.

The exhibition Piran does a perfect example of told above. Authors sensible, sensitive and very personal highlighting of features of the city to which the series presented is dedicated meet us through known formulas that sometimes perhaps look like cheap tricks to fascinate audience. Anyway the series is meant to be an homage to the city and in as such a pleasant acquisition. But in form of a book still boring enough to become a gift for esteemed visitors from all over the world.

October 22 - November 25, 2008

Month of photography in Ljubljana is meant to become a part of the European organisation one day. Until now Dejan Sluga, director of the festival, along with assistants and co-producers has organised this festival this year for the 3^rd time. Number of exhibitions and the quality artwork presented there has mostly depended on interests of co-producers because funds of the festival itself most probably cannot cover more than the basic events. Everything else is an agreement to work together in order to awaken interests in photographic projects through associating a number of spaces and their audience.

The greatest problem of the festival in Ljubljana is that it not easy to find interest in such manifestation within major institutions and sponsors, but the European association is based on idea of homing the Month of Photography in one city. In all cases we speak in terms of capital cities of 7 European countries. This way all producers from outside Ljubljana are just some kind of associated partners and not really a true part of the festival although the distinctions between centre and province are not evident. Presently is seems sensible that both parts see interests in cooperation. The festival has richer programme and other institutions and galleries use festival’s coverage for their own publicity. To make things better in the future the organisers decided to change annual rhythm to biannual. This way this small working collective probably wants to have more time to gather more funds, prepare better projects and bring the festival to the level of being worth of European elite.

In the end it has to be mentioned that beside discussions, presentations and exhibitions the festival’s very important highlight is its Exhibition of the year award granted to artists and curators/producers.

A boring picture of interesting symposium

For someone working mostly directly with artists, artworks, display spaces and especially present time, at first glance this topic could sound a bit boring. But perhaps because of my trained profession and six years of working experience in a museum for modern and contemporary art I cannot neglect the issues the symposium in Rijeka brought out. It is useless to understand museums’ duty to preserve heritage, together with the most recent, as the only duty they have. Or at least understand it as mere keeping safe the material part of it.

Visiting the exhibition Heresies of Pedro Meyer at MMCA

Defining what media art is, is not an easy task and speaking in terms of new media is even harder and depending on the context for which the definition is constructed. The term new media was used in its broadest sense in the context of this symposium and nobody critically approached to the problem of denomination. And I don’t feel that should. Most of the time it was talked about artworks applying modern technologies and issues that arise at handling them in the contexts of a museum. Very interesting was that was pointed out the understanding tat not only technical means are part of this kind of artwork but also its context. And for museum’s needs (cultural future needs) both should be preserved. This means that beside hardware and software a detailed documentary material or instruction manuals should be included in order to provide possibility for adequate interpretation for future generations.

Permanent collection at Peek & Poke Retro Computer Club

Anyway I stay skeptical about this. I do not believe that is possible to save a lot for a long time and reconstructions will always, like always did, depend on imagination of interpreters. Life of an artwork ends in the moment when becomes a museum’s object and thus acquires another identity and meaning inside a society. Since that moment we can only speak in past tense about it or include the museological context in interpretation.

Dan Oki at the opening of the exhibition Visible/Invisible by Kata Mijatović in Mali salon

Free wireless in Rijeka

October 1st, MGLC, Ljubljana

In the year 2007 I have been receiving by mail one Boring poem each month sent by Dejan. In the beginning I thought it is meant to receive it, read or see it, think or not think something about it and leave it to memory. When Dejan told me he is having a presentation I checked the archive on my external hard disk which contains what I managed to rescue from two my previous computers and discovered that 6 of 12 poems are available to me. After going again through them it became obvious that the presentation will be very welcome in constructing a sinthesis about this work.

In January 2008 the poems were published in form of an artist’s book by P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. in edition of 10 copies. One finds in the box DVDs, a floppy disk and photographs.

The presentation was really enjoyable and a variety of quotations from different spaces caused some kind of amusement. All together acted as instructions for using the poems and as such becoming a part of the whole project - the 13^th poem. When I mentioned this to Dejan he just pointed out something I understood as: “everyting evolvs by taking some kind of ready made and change its context, wich means its meaning and in a moment become another ready made”. These are not his words althought he likes to talk about ready mades.

So, everybody welcome!

This blog will be writen in English with all respective care toward the language I have. Sometimes some syntactic or semantic distortion may be used deliberately in licentia poetica way. Slovene probably won’t be used for practical reasons. It is virtually impossible to do everything in both languages.

There are some ideas in my head about what shall this blog as a part of my homepage stand for but I’d rather see with what it will surprise us.

I hope you won’t only enjoy it.