Léonard QYLAFI, Albania

Unloaded (Rape of Europa ), 2024, 95 x 110 cm, Oil on canvas

Unloaded, is a series of paintings I have been working on in recent years that are paintings based on images sourced from digital media. They are based in particular on screenshots captured while browsing that capture the moment of the image loading from blurry to actual image. In this process what interests me is the relationship we have with images, how we think of them and interact.

For this particular work, I referred to the image of the work Rape of Europa by Titian.  An image that runs through time and cultural traditions of iconographic allegory based on a mythical tradition as is the case of Western art.

The image is cropped to the detail of the main characters showing Europa and Zeus as a cow. I wanted to reinterpret the myth by using the influence and interaction the image producing, distributing or viewing technology has in our recent and contemporay culture. With its transitory status as a half-loaded, blurry, somehow distant the image also echoes a sort of symptomatic behavior we have now related to the western traditions of art and culture. We are actually caught in the moment of remembering and forgetting what we are and where we come from ….