Aldin Popaja (*1971) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo (1990–1995) and at the University of Applied Arts in Prague (1995–2000), where he later worked as an assistant professor in the painting studio of Pavel Nešleha, and later of Stanislav Diviš. Since 1991, he has exhibited at more than sixty exhibitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Spain. In 2019, the exhibition called Stone Sleepers was also shown in the prestigious Václav Špála Gallery in Prague.
Aldin Popaja started working on the Stone Sleeper project already around 2010. It is his most comprehensive and perhaps also the most emotionally powerful work. In it, he returns to the Balkans, where he is inspired by the medieval stone tombstones, the cultural and historical treasure there. In grave drawings and texts, he discovers hidden religious and secular symbolism, which he redefines and transfers to the canvas, where it enters a new context and thus acquires surprising aesthetic meanings.
The painter borrowed the name for his visual work from recent years from the collection of poems The Stone Sleeper (1966) by the Bosnian author Mako Dizdar (1917–1971).
Aldin speaks his own artistic language, the advantage of which is to capture seemingly inexplicable phenomena. It opens before us a path full of energy, which becomes a spiritual experience.
Curator: Andrea Krejčí
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