EVERLAST
Lek M. Gjeloshi
Curated by Vala Osmani

27/3/2019 – 27/4/2019
Opening: Wednesday, 27 March 2019 at 20:00

Address: The Boxing Club, Rr. Mark Isaku 8, 10000 Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo


Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina is pleased to present Everlast, an exhibition with Lek M. Gjeloshi curated by Vala Osmani.

This is the first collaboration of Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina with Lek M. Gjeloshi.

Everlast is an exhibition explored through a site specific multi-channel video installation based on a monochromatic body of work, set for a voyage in the space of the Boxing Club.

The exhibition developed a new production of work and a challenging process for an artist seeking a specific setting to elicit his work. The monochromatic, the black and white in Lek’s work, removes the colors of reality and creates space for a spiritual tonality between the observer and the fragment that is observed, explored alongside with the “alienating effects of spaces in limbo” (Forbes 2018).

Everlast unleashes images from the recent and distant memory, insisting on a single color as the ultimate way of representatation, with a boxer as a character and as the everlasting or the (un)known power recognized by the space, with the artist deliberately exploring circumstencial and cinematographic references to construct stories.

Six stories with overnight drawn characters lingering in the space, moving slowly, or trying to move, challenging, confronting, trapping in order to conjure the viewer. Striped from colors in order to play in this specific setting with layers of existing colors present, that mark history and time, the Boxing Club host Everlast drawings and characterswhere:
The boxing ring is once again visible.
The boxer is in solitude, punching into emptiness.
The cat is moving in and out.
The smell.
The sound.
The bride.
The tired boxer taking a shower, casually holding onto a baseball bat.
The body standing in the bathtub.
The mythological women looking at each other, over the body of the boxer.

Characters of the Everlast exhibited in an Everlasting space, become alive in the space, so that they can die, all over again. The boxer and all other mesmerizing characters are there to repeat, to displace, to push the limits of resemblance and limitations of space (Sturtevant 2007).

In popular culture, the name Everlast is synonymous with boxing, although the company started out as a swimwear manufacturer in the Bronx in 1910. On the company website the history is writen that the seventeen year-old Jacob Golomb began making suits that he guaranteed would last for a full year.

The exhibition title Everlast has positioned the artist in a mysterious relationship with the past of the space of the Boxing Club and with the histories which trigger his drawings. The space is activated, always in a relationship with content of the known or the unknown agency.

Lek M. Gjeloshi (1987, Shkodër, Albania), studied Visual Arts at Fine Arts Academy of Florence, in Italy (2010). His artistic practice mainly focuses on the elaboration of a particular intensity emanated by the absence of a predetermined object of investigation.

His solo exhibitions include: “Sleepwalkers” at Zeta Gallery (Tirana, 2018); “All my colours turn to clouds” at Villa Romana (Florence, 2016); “Off-cells” at Civic Gallery of Shkodër (Shkodër, 2016). In 2016 he was the winner of “Ardhje Award” for Young Visual Artists, organized by TICA – Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art in Albania. In 2015 he was the winner of the “Idromeno Prize” for Young Albanian Artists. He has participated in many group exhibitions from 2007, including: “Ex Gratia” curated by Adrian Paci and Rischa Paterlini at Collezione Iannaccone (Milan, 2018); “A time for dreams” curated by David Elliott at Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow, 2014); “Fuori Posto”, “Nuovo Cinema Masaccio” and “Lontano da dove?” curated by Pier Luigi Tazzi between Casa Masaccio and Lanfranco Baldi Foundation (Florence, 2014, 2013, 2012). In 2018 he was artist-in-residence at Residency Unlimited in New York.

EVERLAST wth Lek M. Gjeloshi was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Albania, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Kosovo, Municipality of Prishtina, x-print and DZG.