ABITO MARI
Fabrizio Bellomo's solo exhibition at the GOCAT Gallery in Tirana is conceived as a reflection on the contemporary Mediterranean landscape, with particular attention to the cultural interweavings between Puglia, Calabria and Albania. Through a group of works developed over the last twenty years, the artist explores the layering of memory, space and architecture, placing the concept of vernacular artistic language at the centre of his research as a means of reading and reworking territories. The exhibition itinerary unfolds across both spaces of the gallery, creating a dialogue between video, installation and photography. Vernacular language, understood as a spontaneous and layered idiom emerging from the interaction between people and their environment, appears in Bellomo's works as a hybrid element, capable of questioning official narratives and revealing the complexity of the social and architectural fabric.
ABITO MARI is more than a simple exhibition; it is a personal and coherent body of work by an artist who collaborates with institutions and involves craftspeople and local communities in the creation of site- and context-specific works. Fabrizio Bellomo's exhibition at the Gallery of Contemporary Art Tirana (GOCAT) represents a unique opportunity to explore the visual and material memory of the Mediterranean through an artistic language that combines documentation, archive and emergent intervention. The project sets out to return a critical and poetic reading of the contemporary, stimulating an open dialogue between past and present, between Italy and Albania, between art and territory. Put with a dose of irony — which is also quite visible in Bellomo's work in this exhibition — “yesterday the material that best united and represented the East was perhaps concrete. Today the material that unites the whole world most is the LED”.
Text by: Elton Koritari
Organised by: EJAlbum & MeWe Contemporary
Under the auspices of: MANE Foundation
Gallery Director: Ena Bulku
With the support of: Italian Culture Institute in Tirana
In the framework of The Italian 2025 Cultural Week
Design: Heldi Mema
Editor: Graziana Di Santo
Gallery Team: Kristanja Çene, Diana Bregu, Salome Germain
Dates: June 4 – July 12
GOCAT Gallery
Opening: June 4 – 19:30
Welcome!
Press release: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AYdCZ7ZOdvyiZ1UwBLqaGMUP9dMrEr1X?usp=sharing