The personal exhibition of Lek M. Gjeloshi, “N’jerm”, opens at the “Zeta” gallery during the 14th of December 2018 – 10th January 2019. This exhibition initiated from the artist s casual confrontation followed by the desire to explore an old negative zooming device (35mm). Making it work for a set of photographs shot by an unknown photographer, for unspecified events, brings to the exhibition their mysterious character as a result of the hazy information they have about them.
The images presented in the exhibition photographs, in two negative passages, veiled with a kind of a dull blue, create a dreamy feeling and even more by showing unclear phantasmagorical shapes: nuns dressed in black, dense presence of childhood portraits, human beings during religious rites.
Taking photos of these pictures with a mobile phone by the author of the exhibition, neglecting many technical stages of photo development and using on them a negative filter from mobiles apps, constitutes the journey all the to the exhibition. Overlapping negative over negative, significantly avoiding the main objective of photographic shooting, provides a new sensation in this hybrid positive series, completely absorbed by blue color.
The exhibition brings images that reflect such state and movement, where the variety of colors is not the artist’s choice by default, on the contrary, one color simplicity is what prevails, mostly affirming the relationship man establishes with the forces of the unknown, the effort he undertakes especially on self-awareness associated with predetermination of destiny.
Expressive language is spared. Through peaceful events, daily moments and those of Catholic rituals, situated inside or outside, where the child’s figure is so present, the worry arises: how deep should the marks be, so that time does not disfigure them However, more than the content of the exhibition, the sentiment that the author seeks to convey through the blue nebula, which spreads around the edges the same as water ripples, like waves flowing without interruption while anyone completes their cycle of effort.
* Lek M. Gjeloshi was born in 1987 in Shkodra where he lives and works. He studied visual art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence (graduated in 2010). His personal exhibitions include: “All My Colors Turn to Clouds”, Villa Romana, Florence (2016) and “Off-Cells”, Art Gallery, Shkodra (2016). In 2015 he was the winner of the “Idromeno” award, awarded by Shkodra Art Gallery. The following year (2016), he won the “Advent” award for young Albanian visual artists. Since 2017 he has been working as the person in charge of the archive at the National Marubi Museum in Shkodra. Numerous are the joint exhibitions where he participated since 2007, such as: “Ex Gratia” in the Lannaccone Collection in Milan (2018); “A Time for Dreams” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2014); “New Cinema Masaccio” (2014), “Out of Place” (2013) and “Lontano da dove” (2012) at Casa Masaccio and at the Lanfranco Baldi Foundation in Italy.
