Dripping Cavities

 

by Bekim Hasaj & Valentina Gelain

 

art exhibition

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The exhibition project aims to promote a cycle of events focused on the two multidisciplinary projects 'The Grey Hour' and 'Scanning Landscape', at a national and international level in 2022. The first inaugurational exhibition took place at Makers' Gallery, Vaasa | Vasa, at the end of December 2021.

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Dripping Cavities. Title that heralds in a whispered but vibrant vision the two artworks presented, evoking connections among their peculiarities.
A pragmatic research, outlined by traces and testimonies, contrasts with a more abstract analysis, driven by feelings... an exploratory state corresponds to a wandering motion.
However, in the profiling of this individual narrative, elements of a common stage also emerge.
The two projects were inspired, finding expression and concreteness, by the territories and spaces of Ostrobothnia, in 2021. The two works, echoing each other and finding resonance in their duality, open a dialogue that founds its voice in the areas where they were implemented. The geographical aspect and the exploratory/experimental character that will be the focus of the art exhibition are therefore decisive.
All this is accentuated by the figure of the two artists who, through a plurality of mediums and techniques, offer a varied scenario of content and form.
Encouraging dialogue and confrontation on the awareness of the other and ourselves, finding expression in the environment and its nuances; bringing out the territory through perceptions, colours, shapes, patterns that, by concretizing the almost/now invisible, refresh the viewer's gaze with renewed curiosity.

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The Grey Hour, Valentina Gelain, 2021

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The art film highlights how we can relate emotionally to the environment to express our inner mental and emotive states.
In this case, starting from a personal experience, it shows a frame of mind connected to apathy, the inability to act, the difficulty of self-relating and, specifically, the dissociative disorders. More generally, to a hard period, which can be linked to depression (or not), to a turbulent emotional state or, in this case, a stuckness moment.
The Grey Hour is an intimate encounter and dialogue with oneself, played with shades of grey and, paradoxically, with beauty and harmony, which want to give space and light to mental issues that are often still victims of taboos in today's society.

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The project is the artist's most recent multidisciplinary art production and its body of work includes: film (video art), photographs, performance, crafting and poetry.
However, the main part of the production is composed of the art film in question, which was made during the year, among the interiors of Malakta (Malax) and natural landscapes of Ostrobothnia, Finland. The filming session was mainly concentrated in the spring, when the territory offered the shades and colours that Gelain was searching for the work. Tones and instants explicitly ancticipated by the title.

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Scanning Landscape, Bekim Hasaj, 2021

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The inspiration for this project comes as a result of my long observations and travels made mainly along the western part of Ostrobothnia, of the houses, cities, communities, and the territory that hosts them.

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I am particularly interested at this point, in the mutual relationship of the community with this environment, and also from an anthropological point of view, I want to examine images, places, people, signs, and traces, between past and present.

But, what is a 'landscape genre' in Art? It refers to a specific style of doing art by creating visual representations of the surroundings environments (landscapes) basically naturedominated but also urban/city scenes. The technique and style can differ from artist to artist and such is also the medium or the perspective of the singular artist. The subject is in itself the "landscape" which is generally seen as detached from the artist's eye.

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It is from here, where I take it, and start my personal-visual analysis and interpretation. In an allegorical expression 'scanning' my subject from no-distance, almost attached to its surfaces, its patterns, its colors, shapes, cavities, traces, feelings, stories, eternal time...

Reconsidering to represent the 'Landscape' out of its conventional-historical frames although through a personal and arbitrary perspective in the present. -I want to be able to examine and stimulate discussions starting from visual samples created by me or by those picked up from a natural state and un-alternated.

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Technically speaking, I use my pictorial language, which consists of the visual play of two or more images superimposed but, in this case, applied to the central subject of the landscape.

 

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The art projects have been supported by Svensk-Österbottniska Samfundet & Svenska Kulturfonden.
The exhibition project is kindly supported by Svensk-Österbottniska Samfundet.
Thank you to Malakta for the technical support.

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