Gani Llalloshi: NOSTALGIE

The exhibition of established author Gani Llalloshi concludes a successful program year of the Piran Coastal Galleries.

With his solo exhibition at the Piran Civic Gallery, the coastal artist continues his series of paintings titled Nostalgia. As the central motif of his first exhibition of the series at Ljubljana Castle in 2012, he used kilims, a type of carpets originating from the Balkans, which his mother also used to make. A characteristic pattern from the Albanian ethnographic tradition was adopted as a painting border into which he incorporated imaginary landscapes.

More than ten years later, he approached the creation of the cycle, which originally bore the French title Nostalgie, in a different way. Floral compositions on large canvas surfaces, which extend into the live edges of his paintings, and are without original borders, literally pulsate in lush bloom.

In his works we can observe a blend of Andy Warhol’s motif patterns, Klimt’s Art Nouveau vegetation and folk art from the author’s childhood memories. All of the above resonates in a rich and intense colour palette. Gani’s painting expression invites the viewer into his intimate world, his family circle, where the artist, his wife and daughter meet in dreamy images. The exhibited oeuvre, created in the last three years, comprises large-format canvases.During the duration of the exhibition, a multilingual catalog will be published with a critical text written by Shkëlzen Maliqi, a renowned Kosovar philosopher, art critic and sociologist.

The Piran Coastal Galleries prepared the exhibition in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Kosovo in Ljubljana, which celebrates the days of Kosovo culture during the opening week.

Gani Llalloshi was born in 1965 in Pristina (Kosovo). After graduating in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Pristina in 1989, he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. There he completed his painting specialty in 1991, and two years later he also completed his graphics specialty. As a DAAD scholarship student, he studied at the HdK (now UdK) in Berlin in 1997/98. He is a member of the Society of Slovenian Fine Artists (DSLU) and a member of the Society of Kosovo Artists (SHAK). Gani LLalloshi has been successfully cooperating with Piran Coastal Galleries for many years. He last presented himself at the Piran City Gallery in 2019 with the exhibition Walk with me, dedicated to his daughter Rina. He regularly leads pedagogical and andragogic workshops. Last year he tried his hand again as a curator. At the invitation of the Ptuj City Gallery, he prepared a group exhibition of coastal artists entitled Art is ours. He lives and creates in Piran.

Curator: Janja Kralj, Co-curator: Matic Bukovac, Guest reviewer: Shkëlzen Maliqi