Alkan Nallbani to be featured in Promenade gallery

TIRANA, July 13 – Albanian born, New York based painter Alkan Nallbani will have a cycle of his works displayed at the Promenade Gallery of the southern coastal city of Vlora. The exhibition called Garden of the Gods brings on display a series of landscape paintings and other genres from his collection. Born in Albania 1971, Nallbani graduated Albania Academy of Fine Arts, 1994. He lives and works in New York and Florence, Italy. He has participated in dozens of solo and collective exhibitions around the world. He focuses on oil paintings, drawings and etchings. In an interview with the New York Times last year, Nallbani said his art career started in communist Albania which considered 20th century art decadent and reactionary. “My teachers at the Albania Academy of Fine Arts told me that I could only fulfill my talent and potential by moving to a place with more possibilities. They pointed me to New York, saying this was the best of all choices. But at that time New York seemed an impossible, irrational dream, so I folded it deep inside me. ” “After the Communists were ousted in 1991, I had to choose between joining the new democratic leadership or focusing solely on my art. Opting for the latter, I boarded the boat for Italy and spent the next eight years there, painting and teaching. Now, having finally arrived in the United States, I stand at a crossroads. My heartbeat quickens as I absorb the stimulus of New York, the modern world at its most frenetic. Technology forges new connections and yet isolates us,” says the painter.