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