Sislej Xhafa, Non Unplugged 2012

TIRANA, May 16 – For his first solo show in Istanbul titled Non Unplugged 2012, Kosovan artist Sislej Xhafa turns NON into a key manufacturing space/shop. This exhibition at NON is a site-specific re-edition of the artist’s 2006 exhibition, MN Unplugged 2006, realized in Frankfurt at the Michael Neff gallery for its final show.
In his works, Xhafa questions the forms and attitudes of social, political, and economical realities of current times using a minimal yet subversive language. A common thread running through his works is an ability to provoke the viewer to actively engage with his works while often ironically highlighting the complexity of modern society.
NON Unplugged 2012 consists of a performative sculpture whose only materials are a key maker, a table and a chair, and a key cutting machine. The key maker will reside at the gallery during the gallery’s open hours and produce copies of the key to the gallery door throughout the day. These keys will be available for purchase from him for a minimal fee, and can be used to gain entrance to the gallery at any time during the exhibition’s duration.
With NON Unplugged 2012, Xhafa transgresses the traditional boundaries of the gallery system, proposing the introduction of an element of transparency to the structure of a private institution. The exhibition will explore themes of trust and security through the agents of interaction and participation within an institutional setting. Do the concepts of trust and security exist in opposition to one another in such a setting? If so, must one be sacrificed for the other to be maintained? These questions are rooted in the notion of the art gallery as a controlled, planned organization of time and space. Exhibitions involve preconceived arrangements of works in a uniform space, and are presented to the public during fixed hours. The public’s experience with works of art, no matter what the medium or discipline, is therefore mediated through an institution’s need for constancy and administrative organization. This specific type of spatial and temporal organization has no conceptual relation to the context of the artworks displayed, but is bound to the submission to the received necessity for security that is rarely subjected to performative critical examination. These are the conventions that will be questioned and challenged during NON Unplugged 2012.
Born in 1970 in Peja, Kosova. Sislej Xhafa is a Kosovan Albanian artist who lives and works in New York. Xhafa has exhibited widely all around the world. Inaugurated on May 12, the exhibition will remain open until June 15.