LOTTI

   

 

    Essential Work focuses on the isolating effects of the pandemic and its impact on workers. It shows the time spent focusing on nothing but work and survival, something no one was prepared to handle after the shut down. To accurately portray that feeling beyond the art itself, some pieces are featured separately. The stand-alone car parts represent the pieces of a whole that, for the time being, have been torn apart. Lotti’s observational paintings communicate not only the painstakingly long hours we’ve all dealt with during the pandemic, but the progression of detail as a result of the eventual new day-to-day routine. In this exhibition, we hope to retell the

story you’ve all experienced--from the eyes of an essential worker.

NSU Museum Studies Class, Davie, FL. 2021

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    Essential Work is a collection of observational paintings of the mechanic shop where I work a full time job. These oil paintings of lone objects are done in isolation and after closing time. The shop being an "essential business" remained open during the Covid19 pandemic while most of the world was on lockdown. I ceased on the opportunity to use the space as a studio and subject matter.

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Jefreid Lotti, Miami, FL. 2021

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    Knees Deep is a series of works inspired by the traumatic events that followed Hurricane Irma in 2017. The storm that spoiled dozens of artworks, sketchbooks and furniture in my South Florida home-studio. Thus images of exposed pipes, sunken cars and moldy sketchbooks populate the works. The pictures in this series explore the common sights most South-Floridians are familiar with and hint at the fragility of this subtropical paradise.

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Jefreid Lotti, Miami, FL. 2019

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    Observe Lotti’s radiography of the “efichensi” (a vernacular pronunciation of efficiency), that affordable living space that has become the door to the American dream for many immigrants and crucial to understanding the sociology of Cuban-American immigration; or Miguel Saludes’ pixilation and augmentation of reality, enlarging the American landscape, from a field of flowers to a concrete wall, scrutinizing the surrounding, processing its dualities to the limits of abstraction until digested into a totally new identity; or Labañino’s contractile reality that merges different points of view into the same plane, allowing blurred memories and details to coexist in the same space. These three artists are crossed by their hyphenated identities, Cuban-Americans belonging and bonding like most of us, challenging traditional painting to express their personal journey into a new ecosystem, a journey that we are from now on thankful they shared with us.

Joaquin Badajoz, Manhattan, NY. 2017 

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    Jefreid Lotti's ongoing body of work is preoccupied with the content of identity.  Growing up in two worlds, Cuba and the United States, he is conscious of being torn between two cultures... In series like Efichensi, (the Spanish enunciation of the word efficiency) he depicts the most commonly forgotten aspects of an immigrant’s life. An illegally-rented room that provides affordable living space, the efichensi acts as a machine for the dweller to reach their version of the American dream. Although initially seen as an uncomfortable passage that narrates the struggle of immigration, the Efichensi paintings have become a homage to a forgotten space, a catalyst of dreams where all success stories begin. In other series like Llantos (or Lamentations), Lotti shifts his gaze to subjects like his mother, whose portraits have become a recurring motif for expressing deep emotional concerns such as sorrow and empathy. Lotti’s broader work lays a critical eye on popular American society, which the artist perceives is being carved out by superficiality, self-absorption, technology and divisive politics.

    Sérverus, Miami, FL. 2016

  

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    On the other hand, Cuban-born Lotti- who came to the U.S. at age 11- is exhibiting a series of monotypes, one-of-a-kind images that employ print-making techniques.Some of these monochromatic works use the painter’s palette as a plate; they all contrast the black ink with the paper to combine myths, sexual archetypes, and child-like dream images in surprising ways.  

 

Jesús Manuel Rojas Torres, WUM. 2013

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Lotti’s impressive series of monoprints, many using a large painter’s palette as a plate, bring us into the an arena of the unconscious where symbols do battle with they’re alleged meanings.  The locomotive, the sea, the moon, even the figure are made to confront the greater force of what they mean.  It is a rebellion of signifieds against the signifiers.  Eros, anger, annihilation, despair are loosened upon the visual icons and dreamt codes that evoked them for millennia, but no more.  

Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Miami, FL. 2012

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