TIRANA, Nov. 17 – During my whole life when I was asked what I was afraid of, I immediately answered, the darkness, earthquakes and flying, says painter Gazmend Leka who has opened his “Natura Morta” (Still Life) exhibition at the FAB gallery of Tirana’s University of Arts.
“It seemed that by talking about them and painting them, I turned them into concrete beings, I made them present and as such it was easier for me to make them non-dangerous in my life,” he adds.
Curator Ardian Isufi describes Leka’s exhibition as a psychological journey completed in pictorial language through silent objects.
“Gazmend Leka proposes beyond the initial view of ‘People and Objects’ a philosophical game with the death image instilled in our minds,” says Isufi.
“The last-minute anthropology in his paintings is at the same time a ‘historical fixation’ but also ‘a fiction event’ of characters who have left important traces in the history of humanity to explain, according to him, in metaphorical language that at the end of our journey ‘The light is God’s shadow,’” adds the curator.
Gazmend Leka, 63, is an arts professor and winner of the Onufri 2010 visual arts competition.
The exhibition at the FAB gallery will remain open from Nov. 17 to 30.
