On June 18th, 2024, Harabel Contemporary inaugurated “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, an exhibition of mixed materials, by Fatlum Doçi, curated by Harabel, at NAAN Gallery.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

The most significant source for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Metamorphoses by Roman poet Ovid, an epic poem that waves together many Greek and Roman myths. Shakespeare plays with those myths, feeling free to recreate them, so does Fatlum Doçi when creating, a process which for him is a place of transformation, a relief from rigid order, as is the forest for Shakespeare. Fatlum’s art works are full of symbolism, or not at all: they are simply free. Every sculpture is a new unknown creature, ready to come to life, but more likely coming out of a dream than of a nightmare, or just from a planet which doesn’t categorize good or bad.

Fatlum explores the idea of places beyond reality (transformed by enchantment and the supernatural maybe?). As A Midsummer Night’s Dream introduced the use of fairies, magic, unexpected and uncontrollable events, and desire-induced chaos while also exploring the light side of love, Fatlum’s work seems to propose that the human relation is a dream, or perhaps a vision; that it is absurd, irrational, a delusion, or, perhaps, on the other hand, a transfiguration.

As in Shakespeare’s play the lovers run away from restrictive Athenian customs to hide in the forest, find themselves entangled in a supernatural and chaotic experience, and emerge changed and renewed; similarly, Doçi’s work is the freed offspring of a mastered painting technique; it seems as everything he has learned has been reborn: flowers, trees, water creatures, human shapes, have now different colors, forms an lives… everything has been reimagined, and what we see is the first moment of creation of the New. After that, that New will be ready to grow, to then be reimagined once again.

Curatorial text by Ajola Xoxa