Tirana Times
TIRANA, June 7 -Kunsthaus Zurich is hosting the first museum exhibition in Switzerland of the work of Albanian artist Adrian Paci. New videos and a painting inspired by Italian poet and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini are at the centre of the exhibition ‘Motion Picture(s)’ which will be open until August 22, organizers said in a statement. The works reflect pivotal moments of humanity and condense the consequences of conflicts and societal rupture.
‘Electric Blue’ is the title of the new video work created by Adrian Paci especially for the Kunsthaus exhibition. The title is that of an erotic TV series on what had been Yugoslavia’s state channel, one of the few entertainments available under communism. This work, produced in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Graz, is situated in Paci’s hometown of Shkodra. The artist had already used that location for the production of his video ‘Turn on’, which was shown at the 2005 Venice Biennale and marked Adrian Paci’s international breakthrough.
Adrian Paci was originally trained as a painter. For this reason, curator Mirjam Varadinis chose for his first exhibition in a Swiss museum an entirely new painting, ‘Secondo Pasolini’ (2010), which transfers the medium of film to that of painting. For this large-sized work Paci virtually dismantled the famous film Racconti di Canterbury (1972) by Pier Paolo Pasolini by detaching single frames and painting them. This attitude, between moving image and freeze frame, film and painting, is characteristic of Paci’s work.
A second video in the exhibition is closely related to the history of painting. The 2009 video is entitled ‘Britma’, which means ‘scream’ and refers to Edvard Munch’s famously iconic painting. Paci’s work features two children, obviously excited, one of whom seems to be screaming.
In addition to this entirely new piece, the exhibition also features Paci’s earliest video work, ‘Albanian Stories’ (1997), and ‘The Last Gestures’ (2009), his four-part video installation.
Adrian Paci is one of Albania’s few internationally renowned artists. In his work, which comprises videos, paintings, installations and photography, he addresses topics like migration, globalization and cultural identity and uses urgently compelling images to demonstrate the effects of exile, war and social upheaval on the human subject.
Born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania, Paci currently lives in Milan. He has earned a broad reputation with contributions to key international exhibitions.
