TIRANA, June 7 – The Promenade Gallery in the southern coastal city of Vlora is displaying ‘Personal Issues”, the first solo exhibition by Italy’s Marco Fantini in Albania. The show consists of a series of works which the artist has selected for the occasion at the Promenade Gallery. The exhibition includes various media such as paintings, drawings, photographs, video and other installations.
“Fantini is one of those artists that is characterized by his unique personality and being a trend setter without succumbing to fads. His work does not suffer from the corruptions that occur routinely with artists today. His work is a truly visualized concept. He wanted to present this exhibition as a page from his personal history through different mediums configured in a specific installation for the gallery,” says Fani Zguro, the exhibition’s curator.
Born in Vicenza, Italy in 1965, Marco Fantini lives and work in Milan. In 1983 he attended the Faculty of Architecture at University of Venice following Italo Zannier’s photography courses among others. Influenced by Diane Arbus’ works he started a personal research concentrating on themes of diversity and alienation. In 1989 Marco Fantini traveled to Mexico where he spent 2 years working in Enrique Norten’s architectural studio, and studying Mexican muralist painting. His first oil paintings date back to this period. In the past few years he has worked also in video installation and sculpture projects
Marco Fantini
Personal Issues
The Promenade Gallery
02 June – 13 July 2012
Opening: 02 July 2012, 5pm
Bulevardi Cameria Skele AL 9400 Vlor묠Albania
Wednesday – Saturday h 11-17
Sunday h 17 – 21
By MARCO FANTINI
This year, driven by a renewed curiosity ‘about the things around me, I spent most of the time around the house. I laid my eyes on anything and everything I touched. I scoured every corner, observed, caught, studied, or simply moved every object as if to make sure all the things around me were really there: old photos, scraps, furniture, rugs, mysterious items bought at flea markets, paintings, books, clothes … a sea whose depth of things in which I, as a diver, immersed myself in without even calculate if my oxygen supply would be enough to give me the time to surface from the water.
This obsessive attention had a start date: coinciding with the day my father died. ‘I thought while I dusted windows that framed the few photographs that showed him. It was precisely that precious treasure, which submerged the diver, … the father, whose final disappearance had strategically removed.
Often, the cause of a work is outside the realm of rationality and we often have not yet had enough life to understand the cause. My maternal grandparents were Albanian and even now I wonder how much of that inherited gene may be responsible for the person I am today. Maybe one day I will understand.
This exhibition was dragged behind the tail of the events that had somehow anticipated it. Among these perhaps the most important was the video installation created in 2008 that echos today in light of these events. It seems to have taken on traits of a true revelation: one shot, the hero’s death and the realization that that shot as everything else, were only fiction; an indirect narration of facts, invention, and theater. Thus the movie ends, and afraid that its author is to conclude his personal story … with the discovery that he too is an invention of his characters.
My family, what represent to me, after and before my father’s death is the central engine of this exhibition. I realized it today, Monday, ‘April 30 at 22.30 after completing the final design of Personal Issues …. I understood in an instant, without a reason, and without even the need to formalize this knowledge into a solid, clear concept.
It was time to stop and take a look at the engine and, if possible, to enter the heart of the car …
