Shifting Entities

Leunora Salihu develops her sculptural works on the basis of elementary themes of sculpture, such as the relationship between space and surrounding, movement in the static form as well as sculpture and pedestal. As such, serially handcrafted elements are combined to modular systems and sculptural bodies.

Salihu's objects are continuations of familiar forms, that can emerge from proportions of the human body as well as architectural archetypes of human dwellings. Following these archetypal models, she draws on original, earth-based materials such as ceramics or wood. Experiences she creates with characteristic specificities of a substance are then transferred to the next material. The exhibition title Shifting Entities refers to this principle of her artistic practice – thus the engagement with clay, a soft material that goes through many processes, can lead to a search for the softness and mobility in wood, initially appearing rigid. Beyond that, the concept of the entity opens up the question of the assertion in relation to the other. In this context, the sculptures stand in constant tension with physical contrasts such as lightness and heaviness, attraction and expansion, which Salihu concurrently potentiates and balances. Nothing remains isolated, but is always related to another force. Her experimental approach creates an interlinked nuance entirety of sculptures within a multi-layered vocabulary of organic and constructive forms. Its developments are read through one another, and are constantly oriented toward the parameters of the material. Never hermetic, these dynamic systems outline a network of enclosures and exclusions, taking up the interconnection between object and subject.

Leunora Salihu's drawings are characterized by an interest in biological and geological processes and the relationship between human and architecture. They indicate spaces, are reminiscent of cross-sections of creatures' bodies or seismographic eruptions and at the same time elude a definite allocation. Detached from the sculptural problem of gravity, the artist devotes herself to questioning supporting structures and their principles of repetition. In this regard, it is possible that Salihu, for example, examines the construction of a mushroom hat both in terms of its additive arrays and possible habitability or connects anatomical elements that look like the limbs of insects with cellular structures. Hybrid bodies emerge, which once set in motion seem to undermine supposedly fixed boundaries.

Leunora Salihu works in an inquiring manner, always in pursuit of possibilities to evolve forms and materials, which she sets in dialogue with real and imaginary spaces and its regularities.

Leunora Salihu was born in 1977 in Prishtina, Kosovo and lives and works in Düsseldorf. She studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. Most recently, Salihu's work was awarded the Lothar Fischer Prize (2017). Besides various participations in international group exhibitions, she had solo exhibitions in institutions such as the Museum Lothar Fischer (2018), the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21 (2017), The National Gallery of Kosovo (2017) and the Lehmbruck Museum (2011/12). In spring 2021 Leunora Salihu will have a solo exhibition at Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden.