Background
Lui Shtini was born in 1978, in Kavajë, Albania.
Sheshi Nënë Tereza, Nr. 2 Tiranë AL AL, 1019, Albania
In 1997, Lui enrolled at the Academy of Arts (present-day University of Arts) in Tirana, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2000.
1 Art School Road, Skowhegan, ME 04950, Madison, ME 04950, United States
In 2007, Lui attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Lui Shtini was born in 1978, in Kavajë, Albania.
In 1997, Lui enrolled at the Academy of Arts (present-day University of Arts) in Tirana, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2000. In the early 2000's, he immigrated to the United States, where, in 2007, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
During his career, Shtini held many solo exhibitions at different places, including Van De Weghe Ltd, New York City (2009, 2013), Kate Werble Gallery, New York City (2013, 2016), Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2014, 2017), Cherry and Martin gallery, Los Angeles (2015) and LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, Kosovo (2018).
Also, his work was included in group exhibitions at Grice Bench, Los Angeles; James Fuentes Gallery, New York City; Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm; Galerie Sultana, Paris; T293 gallery, Rome, Italy; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York City; Kate Werble Gallery, New York City, among others.
In addition, Lui was an artist-in-residence at Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Brooklyn, New York City in 2014.
Currently, he lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City.
Some of Shtini’s paintings investigate the tension between the struggle of two entities, producing energy, that is at once menacing, corporeal and romantic. Compositionally, they mark a shift away from a central, vertical format and instead extend horizontally from one edge to another, engaging the entire plane of the painting and giving the edges a more active position. Shtini creates a clash between two forms, acknowledging a pressure, fusion and movement, that is conceived by the relationship between two visceral bodies.
Also, Lui produced drawings of portrait busts of figures, integral to the development of Western culture: Homer, Socrates, Augustus, Aristotle and Nero. The elegant drawings are richly and painstakingly rendered in pencil, applied thinly, layer by layer. The draftsmanship is so pristine as to give the impression, that the resulting image is smoothly imprinted on the paper’s surface. Shtini’s method mimics that of sculpting marble, though in reverse, slowly adding, rather than removing his medium. Likewise, his process echoes the creeping growth of malignancy.
Shtini’s portraits are composites of images, that he has culled through museum visits, books and the Internet. His reinterpretations represent the mythic status of his subjects, transmitted through history as much as they mark the reality of their accomplishments. These poets, politicians and philosophers, immortalized in stone, are in the process of being subsumed by an insidious abstraction. The dark matter, that envelopes each bust, is a surrogate for that, which is not easily described or understood — a conglomeration of pixels, mold, atoms, or bio-engineered matter — it’s as amorphous and persistent, as the future itself.
The thinkers, that Shtini has chosen, are among the most iconic in the development of Western civilization and have helped to build the foundation, upon which myriad ideas have flourished for millennia. The drawings address nostalgia for and idealization of the past and the anxiety, that the passage of time, with its increasing complexities, will obscure what people hold to be most essential.