Midcity, Los Angeles
Brilant Milazimi
Lurk Beneath the Surface
Paul SotoOffice Project Paul Soto is pleased to present, Lurk Beneath the Surface, a solo presentation of new works by the Kosovo-based artist Brilant Milazimi (born 1994 in Gjilan, lives and works in Prishtina). This is the artist's first presentation in the United States, and begins a series of office projects in our Los Angeles location. Lurk Beneath the Surface comprises four new paintings as well as a suite of watercolors. The paintings of Brilant Milazimi explore the function of personal and collective memory. Milazimi embraces the workings of the unconscious as well the pure imagination of his own unique fictional universes. His works appear both familiar and uncanny, reflecting his interest in Kosovo’s psychological underworld. Milazimi’s figures play, embrace, writhe, float, and explode in his compositions, emerging from a deep painterly underbelly as both sinister and sympathetic. His figures are exaggerated, bending and stretching as they hover and glide within his canvases. They are encircled and ensnared with punctuated symbolism like long strings of teeth, which are a recurring motif in his paintings. His perceptions of the world are integrated into paintings like these that are at once bitter, funny, tender, sweet, and strange. Milazimi’s works reflect a universal and relatable condition of struggle and negotiation as one attempts to balance freedom with reality. Brilant Milazimi (b. 1994) lives and works in Kosovo. He received his degree in painting from the University of Prishtina in 2019. His works have been exhibited at National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina; Ludwig Museum Budapest, Hungary; La Maison de Rendez-Vous, Brussels; LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina; and Ermes-Ermes, Rome.