‘Your only real thing is time’

TIRANA, July 25 – “Your only real thing is time,” an exhibition by Albanian painter Artan Shabani has opened at the Promenade Gallery of the southern coastal city of Vlora. The exhibition features a recent cycle of works Shabani has promoted. “The solo exhibition is more complex than a presentation of paintings and collage. It starts with the neuralgic point of the memory, the part when buses used to leave Vlora’s central square overloaded and leaning from the crowded workers heading to the forest which had been nicknamed as the forest of caustic soda. This substance had been dedicated a monument which is still present and is called the Soda forest but since 20 years without soda or soap smell or neon lightening,” organizers say.
The artist’s main goal in this project is reflecting on mutations applied by time and its rules. The collage and paintings belong to the current philosophy of recycling where contemporary artists adjust their research. The exhibition was initially displayed in the Pia Residential Area at the former Soda plant where an oil storage terminal has been built. From July 18 to September 15 it is being displayed at the promenade Gallery, in the Skele-Uji i Ftohte promenade.
Born in Vlora, Shabani, 42, shares his time between Italy and Albania. Shabani is the founder of The Promenade Gallery (2007) and also a curator and a participant in dozens of national and international exhibitions.