Valdrin Thaqi | The House Above the Hill

In his exhibition, The House Above the Hill, Valdrin Thaqi is not merely constructing a narrative but unlocking a realm teeming with profound reflections on existence, identity, and the notion of home. Developed over the past two years, the works on view articulate a language between painting and sculpture. They engage in a silent conversation, constructing complex terrains for the viewer to navigate. 

We walk through a space inhabited by disclosed bodies, carriers of shifting memories, tension, playfulness, and longing. Thaqi extends his characters, granting them elements to explore specific conditions, yet at other times, he strips them down to their bodily core, imbuing them with sculptural agency. 

Speculative aesthetics, artificial and constructed backdrops, sealed structures, and delicate materials, such as white fabric evoking a sense of prestige, are not merely aesthetic choices, but signs of a world in perpetual construction. His characters are caught in self-referential loops, revisiting particular fragments, in search of the unexplored. They uncover the instability of the personal and the metamorphosis of home, not only as a physical space, but also as a mental and emotional one. Thus, we encounter his characters most of the time within these folds—familiar, yet staged, and constricted. Elements such as the silicon belly induce only momentary conditions; they become acts of imagination, props with no function other than the emotional. Yet, no matter how closely we try to decipher, Thaqi’s subjects resist definition. They act as mirrors—both revealing and distorting. Ambiguity is their strength, and while the themes may emerge from the personal, they extend into the universal: conflicted, unresolved, and resonant in their sincerity.

- Erka Shalari