The Notes present a series of photograph records in diary form taken during my trips to the island, to the surroundings by the sea, of the hills, woods, etc. The plainness of elementary, natural shapes evokes peace dissolving subjective states. The island is where my life began. It is the starting point. With each visit I return to the zero point at which I accumulate myself. Isolation of the island becomes my personal one. During long walks through these landscapes of separation, I reach my primordial state by photographing the passed stages of the journey. I take pictures of the tree and note the cycles. The treetop is a link to the sky, whereas the roots to the nourishing earth - the tree has the meaning of life. The geometric structure of a flower is the centre of microcosm. A section of the stone texture of a rock with crystals of salt in its cracks resembles a drawing that I made a long time ago, I do not remember when or where, but it seems as it stands right now in front of me as if I record it again. A photo of the blue sea surface transmutes into colourful tones of the light’s spectre - from burning orange to a deep violet, reflecting the changeability and ambivalence of states again. The hill invites to climbing in its mist. Photography is a record of the wish for walking to the top. Up there in the heights are the realms of atmospheric and hunted clouds. I record the layers of the sky examining myself.

2008.

During the artist’s occasional visits to the island, which is the position that represents her actual and emotional starting point and the "zero point" in the perception of the place and time continuum, the photographs emerged in diary form by means of the snapshot aesthetics without adjustment with a mini digital camera for personal use. Gloria's work does not hide subjectivity of approach since she is the one who "measures" the space only with her own feelings. Both time and space serve here the same pantheistic conception that implies harmony between an individual and the nature, although it is not present in the analogy of experience as much as in the perception of the time cycle sensations and the measuring of the spatial-temporal structure. In her previous works as well, Gloria often entered the inner world of emotions taking a position towards external spatial structures of her house, studio, etc. Walking around the island represents the detection of geometrical primordial structures and signs as it is simultaneously moving through the place of personal visual memory with own guidelines. Speaking in terms of art, her selection of motifs is deliberately banal as the aesthetics of photography avoids representational descriptiveness focusing solely on the category of temporality. The object alone is important merely as the carrier of traces and the lapse of time is traceable in the shifts of motifs, and the amount of light indicates a distinct annual cycle. The photographs operate exclusively in the sequence of images, whereas the completeness of that system generates an artistic counterpart to the pantheistic structure of the landscape. By means of the photography parameters that manage to stop the time it becomes perceptible. The passage of time may merely be an illusion. Nevertheless, it seems possible to redesign it into a pure visual sensation by using a simple vocabulary of spatial-temporal determinants of art.

Jasna Gluić

Multimedia cultural center Split ...