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Why "This is the end"

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Tirana

Why "This is the end"!?

Suzana Varvarica Kuka

One thinks through history that art is a reflection of life. Over the years and many successive developments, the artist has increased his prestige, even when provoking at the time, as well as provoking in modern lives through different media and images, to what we simply call real. Necessarily and naturally, getting to know the artist as an individual is a fundamental process. With his work he brings the reality of his art, which approaches the reflection of his sensory life. American critic Clement Greenberg points out that "The reality of art (that is, the art of every artist) is revealed only in experience and not as a reflection on experience."

Getting to know an artist begins, perhaps when you begin  to think and feel the interiority  of his art? Maybe when you stand in front of the artwork  and  you feel liberated and completely merged in its artistic environment?  Otherwise it is not possible. In front of artworks that  suggest poetic information, you  consciously communicate with their creative style and forms. Getting to know Jon Kraja, the artist of many creative plans, you understand that he  is not indifferent to the index of thoughts, which thanks to the curiosity becomes valuable. And quite clearly I preferred his  idea that "I feel more comfortable, alone in the face of my painting." For me, this is the resource you need to nurture, to go deeper into his (the artist's) individuality, in which spoken and unspoken images are still preserved.

Jon Kraja's cycle of  paintings entitled "This is the end" is a set of illusory two-dimensional images that move, intertwine and shape an "other" world, reflecting an "other" life, where anyone can navigate its anxiety or joy through  the eyes. One of the statements by Jean Helion, the French abstract painter, that "... I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed the imagination with a world built through the senses of the eye" is completely true for every abstract artist, including Jon Kraja with "This is the end". In these paintings, Joni Kraja travels through the eyes' sensation. He previously senses daily reflections, which are often inherited from the past. In an instant, full of creativity and utterly overwhelmed by the effect of the expressive-abstract act, he manages to stop and boldly paint an endless ending. Although he titles the cycle of subliminal torment "This is the end" he clearly reflects his experience of a single segment of time in his creativity and not its completion.

The analysis of the phrase "This is the end", in the broad sense, is the closed circuit of human life experiences. It is the fatal expression that demands the end, as well as the optimistic expression of a new beginning. At this hotspot, Joni Kraja's massive picture , through a wonderful color palette pushes us towards a positive end, to discover  a new beginning. I would never feel "This is the end" as a fallen pessimism of the artist or mine, of somebody or the universe, because the artist has interpreted the image creating the illusion and this shows that his mind is fertile and strong. Because I feel active and transformative seeing the image as an illusion of ideas. For the universe will come to an end, when it has transformed the human being into a new being, that is, into a new illusion.

The analysis of the creation "This is the end" is a reflection of that part of life that carries the expression of Jon Kraja's abstract power. His feelings of non-objective art, to embody the title "This is the end" rank first in surreal thoughts. They then excluded the real visual world, or as we simply call it reality. And finally, through the artist's action and gesture, abstract shapes and forms were marked, and the color is the most powerful medium. The color  spills and slides, clashes and explodes, freezes and molds under the invisible formulas of the artist's own perception. It creates situations of abstraction - unique expressionism, because the artist lives as one. He deliberately seeks to express himself, quite freely, impressively, and under the influence of personal feelings, which begin to be said in the title. They come in different shapes, where the color layers the texture levels over the canvas but seemingly handles a large object, moving and barking, circled by infinite space.

This organic quality of Joni Kraj's painting symbolizes the impact a viewer has on the colorful space and object. He stresses at times because he does not understand and sometimes he enjoys because he gives content to the image. In this reasoning artist Lucian Freud mentions  that "The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real or true". This relates to the abstract feature of the compositional concept of Jon Kraja. The object on the canvas  of "This is the end" is, ironically, so abstract that it moves from one canvas to the other and it is transformed into real explosions of the cosmos.

In this exhibition, however, the artist does not precede the public's expectations on the subject and content. Titles play this role best. Emphasizing the elements and principles of art, gesture, spontaneity, improvisation and colors precede the sensations of everyone observing them. The audience will encounter artist's gestures. Even the increased observation of paintings will be guided by the gestures. I think the public will easily discover and improvise its own sensations on the abstract painting of the modern artist Joni Kraja. His work  can be understood according to Greenberg's statement that "If the early masters created an illusion of space in which one could imagine the existence of being and movement, the modernists created a new illusion of space in which it looks like you can pass through the watchful eye. " The modern style of abstract expressionism of our days is a consequence of the traditional modern century XX. Artist Jon Kraja respects the past, bringing  a personal vocabulary through the abstraction of "This is the end". In his series of paintings, he emphasized what Picasso observes: "There is no abstract art. You should always start with something. After that you can remove all traces of reality." The title "This is the end" is the beginning of content. Multi-motion objects are subject's tracks. Gesture is the form and the color is  Joni Kraja's sensation, which cleans up in this cycle everything that connects us with reality.

About the author: Suzana Kuka Varvarica has been a Curator and Art Historian at the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana, AL. She currently teaches art history at a private university. 

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info@gallery70.art

Tirana

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