Six oil paintings made by Shpëtim Kërçova were displayed at Gallery70. At a glance, the paintings repeat the images almost causing a déjà vu, which is not casual. With “The Project” Shpëtim Kërçova presents a group of paintings with urban landscapes that depict movement, women and dogs roaming the city streets together. The subjects are seen from above and the perspective is distorted. There are no details in the background, except for the sidewalks, the roads and their outlines. The city seems to be Tirana, where the lineaments are not accurate and according to the artist’s perception they’re constantly changing. The streets are often reconstructed, opened and closed. They remain a work in progress, always in a rework process, just like the paintings.
In a previous exhibition called “Street Story”, Shpëtim Kërçova painted groups of stray dogs, which the residents of Tirana immediately feel familiar with, because they see them often. Alban Hajdini, in a concise description of the exhibition, addresses dogs as an organic presence in a human-controlled environment. Dogs are natural, free and they roam everywhere, keeping company with each other and the girls that fill the streets next to them. The girls interact with the dogs and they walk around together.
The paintings are installed in the space and the gaze of the subjects accompanies the visitors from right to left. When you reach the sixth painting on the left, the subject stares with its head turned, as if looking at the other paintings, thus reminding the visitor to return to the exhibition once again. The girls are somewhat similar to each other, with shapely bodies and also similar outfits. They wear tight pants and some of them fur, which combines with the fur of the accompanying animals. All the girls stand out, sometimes from the clothes and sometimes from their exhibitionist attitudes. It is not clearly divided whether the female subjects just resemble each other, or some of them are repeated in some of the paintings.
*Shpëtim Kërçova (Albanian, born in 1968) studied painting and textile in the Academy of fine Arts in Tirana, graduating in 1991. Very active in many exhibitions in and outside the country, Kërçova at his beginnings experimented in different mediums such as installation and mixed media, but soon he concentrated in oil pantings, usually in series. From the 2000 he is one of the well-known contemporary artists of the country and a lecturer at the University of Arts in Tirana. His works usually analyze the human condition in the urban space, their relationship with nature and globalization topics. Some of his selected exhibitions are: “A landscape without horizon”, personal exhibition, Zeta Gallery, Tirana (2015); “Zeta Art Center & Gallery at SUPERMARKET 2014”, Stockholm Independent Art Fair (2014); Personal exhibition, Zeta Gallery, Tirana (2010); “Cosi vicina cosi lontana”, Villa Croce Genova, Italy (2009); “My space”, Hause am Lutzoplawtz, Berlin, Germany (2008); “Virtualbania”, Pavel Haus, Austria (2007); ’03-’11 “Onufri” International Competition, National Gallery of Arts, Tirana (2002).
