Gazmend Leka, a veteran Albanian painter, is displaying 30 recently created paintings in his “Symbolon” exhibition while Finnish photographer and visual artist Noora Geagea and EGS, an internationally renowned graffiti artist, are being featured in joint exhibition called “Five”.
TIRANA, July 9 – Works by Albanian artist Gazmend Leka and two Finnish contemporary artists are being displayed at the National Art Gallery in Tirana in two separate exhibitions.
Gazmend Leka, a veteran painter is displaying 30 recently created paintings in his “Symbolon” exhibition while Finnish photographer and visual artist Noora Geagea and EGS, an internationally renowned graffiti artist are being featured in joint exhibition called “Five.”
In his “Symbolon” exhibition veteran painter and art professor Gazmend Leka was based on Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths where he says that “Heritage is not history, even if they sometimes overlap. Heritage places the past in service of the present; history receives the past on its own terms. Understanding the past on its own terms has never been simple.”
That’s where the artist’s creative work kicks off transforming history under the metaphor of the symbol where old cultures merge with new ones pushing the figment of imagination toward the territory of metaphysics.
“Symbolon” is the artist’s symbolic gesture of give-and-take through interaction of image where everyone can find themselves in every situation,” curators say.
The exhibition curated by Ardian Isufi will remain open from July 11 to 27.
Graduated from the Academy of Arts, Leka has featured his works in dozens of solo and collective exhibitions in Albania and abroad.
“The painting of Leka stresses the idea that painting is not merely an abstract arrangement of signs and colours, lines and planes, nor a direct transcription of nature, but a stratification of different meanings and messages. His somewhat melancholic paintings are inspired mainly by the European metaphysical paintings of the early 20th century and touch upon universal themes such as birth and death, eternity and myth, lost paradise and nostalgia. At the same time the artist’s figure, visibly present in some of the paintings, signifies the situation of the human soul, immersed in the dynamics, but also in the absurdity of everyday life,” curators say.
Finnish “Five”
In the other “Five” exhibition by the two Finnish artists, EGS is featuring some maps in graffiti. “EGS’s maps are not only an abstract version of the global map, but they also play with the European idea as conquerors of new continents which they divide with a pencil and a ruler creating with every tick countries and conflicts which never existed before.”
EGS’s maps also feature the power of paint to change the surrounding environment and the ability of paintings to completely change the way we perceive space.
In her works created in Tirana, Finnish artist Noora Geagea has been inspired by Italian journalist’s quote in his Invisible Cities book where he says that “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
Through her photo and video works, Noora Geagea tries dealing with issues such as travel and documentation of reality and find out her ability about producing reliable portraits of other cities based on Tirana’s portrait.
To Geagea, every city has its own character and personality which serve as a reflection of our inner worlds.
In this exhibition, she tries capturing five completely different portraits of characters, atmospheres and spaces of five imaginary cities which impressed and inspired her. Her work pays homage to cities as creatures of memories, dreams, fear and beautiful stories.
EGS is the most internationally recognized Finnish graffiti artist. His career started in Helsinki during the late 1980s and was part of the country’s first graffiti wave. For the past 25 years, he has painted in more than 40 countries in five continents. He has sought inspiration in local graffiti scenes worldwide and collected global graffiti folklore for his own art.
“Every wave, star, drip or block I have ever painted can be traced to this attitude of graffiti anthropologist. Every fade is reminiscent of some graffiti that I have seen. Every 3rd or bubble has a story to tell. Every piece I have done pays homage to the great graffiti folklore,” says EGS.
Noora Geagea is a visual artist with background in dance. She graduated in 2009 from LCF, University of the Arts London with an MA Photography degree and is currently based in Helsinki, Finland. She works with photography, video and film. Her work hails from different time periods in Finland and abroad.
“A photograph is already a complete entity, but when I start painting, it is important that I do not know in advance what the end result will be.”
