Smooth, shiny and sensuous, while distorting and disrupting.  Reflecting the visitor moving around, changing shape and size and colour, creating new images on the mirror-polished surfaces.   

Solid surfaces become fluid and appear to bend light, blending into and reflecting their surroundings, whether the canals of Venice or a white-walled gallery in London.   In other works, steel sheets join together to create natural forms, with echoes of “Vulcan” by Eduardo Paolozzi (1999) in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

Made of solid steel, with perfect, polished, painted and contrasting natural surfaces that reflect the colours, the forms, the lights and the people around them.  The first solo exhibition “Refractive Vibes” in London of sculptor Helidon Xhixha follows on from his work at the Venice Biennale 2015 and anticipates his representation of his country Albania in the London Design Biennale 2016.   

In Venice, a steel iceberg floated in the middle of the lagoon, detached from seven pillars on the island of San Servolo, raising awareness of the impact of climate change in a city of great beauty and great fragility with its future survival continually under threat and dependant on being able to manage changes in sea levels, perhaps a microcosm for the future of the human race in dealing with the impact of climate change and its impact on the oceans and seas.  

At Contini Art UK in Bond Street, London, mirrored, coloured and crumpled steel sheets hang on the walls behind reflective sculptural forms contrasting perfect geometry and the informality of nature, providing a commentary on both his past works and on potential future directions as he starts to incorporate other materials within the stainless steel forms, perhaps looking forward to the London Design Biennale 2016.   

“I don’t sculpt materials, I use materials to sculpt light”  (Helion Xhixha)