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9/9/2009

Fani Zguro

Valenzuela Klenner Gallery, Bogota'

Valenzuela & Klenner Gallery is proud to announce the solo exhibition of albanian artist Fani Zguro. “Girls, Victims, Spy, Police, Gestapo, Soldiers, Men” consists in these works:

“Broken Threads” is the manipulation of a ‘70s Albanian noir movie so as to transform it into its trailer, by collating footage and using as a soundtrack Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “The Curse of Millhaven”, from album Murder Ballads. This project aims at tackling the phenomenon of crime and revolution starting from the earliest jesuit conspirations, showing revolution is nothing but the infamous motto: my work starts when yours is done. For this reason the movie wasn’t digitalized through usual processes, but was instead filmed with a handicam for the whole of its duration, so as to respect the project’s concept. “Broken Threads” elaborates Cave’s track with Albanian noir movie “Fije qe Priten”, revolving around a bunch of Albanian agents – former nazi collaborators during WWII – operating against the socialist system, suddendly coming back to their homeland to sabotage and destroy some important objectives in the country’s secret industrial plans. The movie stresses the relationship between memory and actuality, old and new enemies, adding up in a noir spy story showing international plots and conspiration finally failing, as usual, in the best of ways.

“Passengers” is a video taken from the albanian ‘noir’ film “Nusja dhe Shtetrrethimi”. This video is 20” long and goes in loop, only showing five german soldiers walking in an empty street, accompanied by the sounds of rain. This is the beginning of the film: a story of the second world war, between Occupation Force and the Albanian Resistance, a kind of homage to Melville’s movie “L'armée des Ombres”.

“U Turn” is a new version of filmmaker Oliver Stone’s homonymous movie. This remake sports the artist and the film’s sole protagonist sharing the same goddamned dialogue lines, even before Columbus’ arrival. The video was shot in a border town between Greece and Albania, where both the artist and the film’s sole protagonist grew up together. Ten years later, upon a new meeting, “U Turn” was shot, and what could pass as the usual fucking interview is nothing but the character’s touristic camera, at work at enlarging his travelogue. The only difference being that within this mini-dvd lurks a trip back through time, as happens within Oliver Stone’s original “U Turn”. The return holds each time an epilogue straight out of Burroughs: America has always been a doomed place, even before Columbus’ arrival. “U Turn” operates and recycles analogous stories and places. The video isn’t simply a minimal version of Stone’s film: it tries all along to reach the fulcrum of history, that history continuosly repeating over the same interview or dialogue as in that fucking afternoon, always out there waiting for us.

Opening 10 september 2009 h 19.30

Valenzuela & Klenner Gallery
Carrera 5 No. 26-28, Bogotà
monday - friday 10 am - 6 pm, saturday 11 am - 5 pm
free admission

stampa

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