"RETROSPECTIVE"

Solo Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Ilirian Shima

From November 5 to 16, 2025, the Athens City Arts Center at Eleftherias Park hosts the solo exhibition of international artist Ilirian Shima, entitled "Retrospective".

The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of his artistic journey, through characteristic paintings and sculptures, which capture his long-standing search for the relationship between matter, form and spirit. It is an internal retrospective, where the creative path is transformed into a life narrative, into a dialogue between the material and the immaterial, the personal and the collective.

The text of the exhibition is signed by art historian and exhibition curator Katerina Koskina, who writes, among other things:

“Ilirian Shima has developed a morphoplastic language, which allows him to move with ease in both painting and sculpture. The form, which he often seeks almost ready-made in natural materials, “dictates” his choices and his artistic practice, sculpting in ceramic, marble, metal or wood or painting, with curved outlines or thick layers of paint, leads him to its “liberation” or transformation. He highlights transformations of forms, abstract or symbolic, often inspired by the human body or the animal kingdom. With rigor and economy in medium and color, but with intense expressiveness on the borders of expressionism, Shima touches on issues such as identity, desire, collective memory and history. Through gesture and the transformation of matter, he challenges the viewer to discover both the world that surrounds him and the inner, personal. His works, deeply poetic, balance between the material and the immaterial, the concrete and the vague.”

“Retrospective” is an invitation to an experiential experience; a journey through time, where art functions as a mirror of memory, identity and inner transformation.

Opening: Friday, November 7, 2025