7 August – 3 September 2026
Galerija-Galleria Rigo
Before us is a cycle of works that brings together, in a singular way, the permanence of metal and the fragility of memory. The artist, originally from Kosovo, returns in this series of sculptures to the formative years of his life: a childhood spent on the shores of Istria. The objects on view are not the result of a subsequent human intervention into form. The artist deliberately preserves the primary shape of sea pebbles, like those he once collected on the beach as a boy and held in the palm of his hand. Yet by translating them from transient limestone into enduring bronze, he sets in motion an alchemy of nostalgia. Each pebble ceases to be merely a fragment of the seashore and becomes a monument to a time gone by.
As in the verses of the great Kosovar poet Ali Podrimja, stone here functions as an anchor of identity. Although today he lives and works far from the Adriatic wave, through these heavy, gleaming bronze forms the artist shows that we never truly leave our memories behind. They remain within us, firm and unchanged, like a stone under the tongue.
This exhibition invites us to touch our own hidden shores and to ask ourselves: which small stones of childhood do we carry in the suitcases of our lives?
About the artist:
Luan Bajraktari was born in 1979. He lives and works between Vienna and Prishtina.
He studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prishtina and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, Italy.
His practice explores everyday structures and situations that often appear neutral, yet carry traces of memory and mechanisms of control. Working across sculpture, installation, and drawing, Bajraktari investigates the shifting relationships between use and permanence, visibility and invisibility, reflecting on how meaning emerges through the process of making.
Galerija Rigo
Velika ulica 5, 52466 Novigrad-Cittanova
T: 052 726 582
E: info@muzej-lapidarium.hr
https://www.muzej-lapidarium.hr/