‘The Painting of Modern Life’ or the search for modernity and an effort to free the Albanian art from the clich고and in-fashion formats, organizers say.
TIRANA, Dec. 21 – This year’s exhibition of the Onufri Competition, ‘The Painting of Modern Life’, opens December 22nd at the Temporary Exhibitions’ Wing of the National Gallery in Tirana. According to its curator, Alban Hajdinaj, “The exhibition is an attempt to build a vantage point on Albanian art, drawn from the concept of modernity.”
Baudelaire maintains that ‘Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its morals, its emotions.’
So, by bringing to attention photos from the 1915-1930 period, paintings from the years between 1960 and 1980, and concluding with the Albanian art of the today,’The Painting of Modern Life’ is a search for modernity in Albanian art. The later period displays a continuity of the pictorial and figurative image in it while the entire exhibition gives an overview of the evolutionary trajectory of the modern image in Albanian art.
The tracing of modernity here comes in tandem with a search for resonances and affinities between the subjects of this exhibition and those features that Baudelaire offers as paradigms of modernity; fashion, clothing, uniforms, the man or woman portrait, and the description of the main aspects of life such as: production, recreation, leisure and aesthetics in continuous flux.
‘The Painting of Modern Life’ is a search for modernity and an effort to free Albanian art from the clich고and in-fashion formats that categorize it under final terms or definitions. It seeks to juxtapose the Albanian art with universal values whilst leaving open-ended its goal.
The exhibition features works from the following artists: Klodiana Alia, Arben Bajo, Sonilda Bardhoshi, Sotir Capo, Rafael Dembo, Brilanta Kadillari, Sidi Kanani, Jakup Keraj, Shp쵩m K쳧ova, Dhimit철Kokoshi, Genti Korini, Greta Dhaskali Lami, Guri Madhi, Blerina Mu衬 Dashamir Myftari, Janaq Pa诬 Orion Papleka, Kristaq Sotiri, Roland Tasho, Orion Shima, Dhimit철Vangjeli dhe Ergys Zhabjaku.
The 18th edition of ‘Onufri’ visual arts competition will be one of the major events of the National Arts Gallery this year.
The exhibition is named after Onufri, Albania’s 16th century most important icon painter whose works are on display at the iconographic museum in the southern town of Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008.
In many of its previous editions, Onufri was held as international exhibition bringing together artists from all over the world.
