Lui Shtini

Tree Spirits

November 22nd 2025 – January 10th 2026

Opening reception Saturday November 22nd 6:00-8:00 pm

Tops Gallery 400 S Front street (entrance on Huling, basement level) Memphis, TN 38103

Tree Spirits presents a selection of works that emerged from Shtini’s deep engagement with the landscape, materials, and traditions of Sardinia, where the artist has spent significant time over the past decade. The exhibition features ten sculptures that occupy both floor and wall space. Mounted on steel structures, his mask-like compositions inhabit the gallery with a commanding presence.

The works are primarily made of cork, a material abundant in Sardinia and central to the island's culture and economy. Cork, which is the bark of the tree, is in a rough state when first extracted. Working closely with local harvesters Shtini sources irregular pieces that match his vision. Their outer surface is carefully cleaned and laid out for observation. At this stage the bark still holds the contours of the tree from which it was cut. For the artist, it is at this moment that the magical potential of new forms reveal themselves and the sculptures begin.

Shtini's sculptural approach mirrors his painting practice using improvisational methods and the use of traditional formats—portraiture, landscape, still life, and now the mask—as vessels to be filled with his vision. Each piece utilizes a process of intuitive subtraction and addition, with different sections cut, carved, sanded, and layered to create a unified object. The finished works reveal smooth and rough surfaces, inviting closer inspection of the assembled parts. Their backs feature semi-rough textures with irregular concave forms, emphasizing the material's organic origins.

Shtini has drawn significant inspiration from Sardinia's carnival tradition; a pagan celebration deeply rooted in the island's mythology and the interconnectedness of humans and animals with nature. Though not depicted overtly in the work, aspects of the distinct costuming and rituals of the region have had a strong impact on the way his sculptures were made.

This show extends the intimate by unifying the flow of imagination with material generation. Drawing on traditional Mediterranean practices still steeped in an animist connection between nature, form and place, Shtini has created a body of work that resists aesthetic categorization. Tree Spirits hovers between the familiar and the uncanny, the ancient and the contemporary.

Lui Shtini is a painter and sculptor from Kavaje, Albania who has lived in Brooklyn for over twenty years. He has had solo exhibitions at LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina, Kosovo; Harkawik Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; James Fuentes Gallery, New York, NY; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; and Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY among others. Shtini’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including the recent shows Abstraction By Any Other Means, Resnick/Passlof Foundation, New York, NY; New Light: Encounters and Connections, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. His work has been reviewed inThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Hyperallergic, and Newcity Art. Shtini attended The Academy of Arts, Tirana, Albania 1996-2000 and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. His work can be found in institutional collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL); Tang Teaching, Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (US); La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona, (ES) and Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (LB).

Tops Madison Avenue Park

Riley Payne

Ocean Size

November 22nd 2025 – January 10th 2026

Opening reception Saturday November 22nd 6:00-8:00 pm

The opening reception will be at our 400 S. Front St. Gallery space in conjunction with Lui Shtini's opening.

Tops at Madison Avenue Park 151 Madison Avenue (viewable on Maggie H. Isabel St) Memphis, TN 38103

On view 24 hours a day

How to depict the fracturing of language, humour and reverence for nature in a world filled to the brim with utter lunacy? That is a persistent question dogging Riley Payne’s practice, and one that drifts around the eight new paintings presented in OCEAN SIZE, at Tops Gallery’s Madison Avenue Park space.

As elusive and impatient as the modern attention span, these works offer up multiple readings through the use of instantly recognizable reference imagery. Yet the moment an interpretation is settled on, the cards are reshuffled – through proximity to a neighbour painting, a slight tweak that the title conjures or by stepping back and viewing the exhibition as a whole, installed on a deep navy star-scape flanked by walls of dusty red and calming yellow.

A scene of romance gives way to one of a warming climate; a calming ocean tries its hardest to stabilize the pink skeleton tip-toeing along its ripples; an upside down world held in the hand of a sculpture appears stable only for an instant before a plant orgy raises it’s tendrilled hand for some attention.

The point is no point - perhaps that’s the problem?

Throughout these contradictions reassurances emerge, tools to cope with the onslaught of an image-soaked modern world start to line themselves up - colour energizes, plants have always been here, painting is still an option.

Riley Payne (b. 1979, Melbourne, Australia) is a self-taught artist who lives and works between New York and Miami. He has exhibited extensively in the U.S and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Mellow, NYC; Fish Island Gallery, CT; New Release, NYC and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. His work has been included in group exhibitions including Harper’s, NYC; Amez Yavuz, Sydney; Tops, Memphis and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Payne's work is held in numerous public and private collections and he has released two publications of drawings – ‘Mad Deep Thoughts’ (Perimeter Editions) and ‘Nude Beach’ (Self published in collaboration with Pau Wau Publications)