Adrian Paci Lives in Transit

26 February – 12 May 2013

# 101

Concorde

While the context of his first works was defined by the experience of exile, Adrian Paci (born in Shkodra, Albania, in 1969) has gradually widened his scope from the personal to the collective. His projects focus on the consequences of societal conflicts and upheavals, showing the degree to which identity is shaped by socio-economic context. His works explore the feeling of loss, the assertion of identity, and the mutability and displacement of human identity. He draws his illustrations of the human condition from episodes in everyday life, shifting these towards fiction and poetry by playing on the tensions between their dramatic and magical aspects. For his first retrospective in France, Paci is presenting a highly diverse selection of videos, installations, paintings, photographs and sculptures made since 1997. Illustrating his movements between different mediums, the exhibition also highlights the bold ways in which he revisits the history of art and cinema.

room 1The Encounter, 2011Video, colour, sound, 22’

Outside the church of San Bartolomeo de Scicli in Noto (Sicily), people in their hundreds line up to shake hands with Adrian Paci. This everyday gesture, a sign of conviviality and sharing, is repeated in ritual fashion while the mysterious procession creates a sense of both union and tension with the local urban setting, now the theatre for this encounter between the artist and a mixed mass of individuals, as he exposes his identity in relation to a specific community.

room 2Vajtojca [Mourner], 2002Video, colour, sound, 9’10’’

Vajtojca is like a kind of rite of passage. Adrian Paci stages his own funeral wake, held in accordance with the Albanian tradition. Sitting beside his deathbed a mourner sings a compelling complaint – after which the artist rises from the bed, as if resurrected.

Centro di Permanenza temporanea [Centre of Temporary Residence], 2007Video, colour, sound, 5’30’’

A silent cortege of passengers shuffles towards a flight of boarding stairs; soon, all the steps are filled. The camera pores slowly over the grave faces of these men and women queuing to travel to an unknown destination. The scene becomes confusing, however, when the frame widens to show that there is no aeroplane at the end of these stairs. The limbo of these boarders symbolises the paradoxical state of permanent transition that is the daily lot of migrants.

The Last Gestures, 20094 channel video installation, couleur, dimensions variable

Forming a fragmented scenario around preparations for a traditional wedding, The Last Gestures captures the silent, ritualised exchanges between the future bride and her family, resonant with the sorrow of their future separation. The characters’ awareness that they are being watched makes them the conscious actors in a codified drama.

Home to Go (detail), 2001 Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Centro di Permanenza temporanea, 2007Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan, & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Amplifying the symbolism of the actions and expressions, the slowing of the scenes gives the video a pictorial quality.

Inside the Circle, 2011Video, colour, sound, 6’33’’

This work explores the complex dynamic between man and animal, as illustrated in the interaction between a trainer and a horse. In the bareness of their actions, which mix in a single expressive code, they seem to be reviving a primitive bond, oblivious to the distinction between species. Their relation unfolds in a choreographed role-play in which the leader

– the woman – finally attains self-definition.

room 3Secondo Pasolini (Decameron) [After Pasolini (Decameron)], 200612 gouaches on paper mounted on canvas, 38 x 70 cm each

Secondo Pasolini (Il Fiore delle Mille e una Notte) [After Pasolini (Arabian Nights)], 200812 gouaches on paper mounted on canvas, 38.5 x 70 cm each

Secondo Pasolini (I Racconti di Canterbury) [After Pasolini (The Canterbury Tales)], 200812 paintings in tempera on paper mounted on canvas, 38 x 70 cm each

These three series of paintings made up of isolated shots from The Trilogy of Life reflect Paci’s fascination with Pier Paolo Pasolini and his search for images that are both simple and expressive. The artist breaks down the sequences, showing how Pasolini’s images are rooted in art history, revealing the balance

that exists both in the filmmaker’s work and his own between time and image, movement and duration, icon and realism.

Brothers, 2010Marble mosaic on resin panel and wood, 160 x 190 x 25 cm

Brothers ennobles a family image by transposing it into mosaic, endowing it with solidity and materiality. As in a number of other works, Paci reworks an image, whether personal or found, in order to express it in another medium, a process which allows him to appropriate a representation that otherwise eludes him.

Electric Blue, 2010Video, colour, sound, 15’

After the collapse of the Albanian state in the 1990s, a man tries to keep his family afloat economically by making copies of porn films. After the upset of coming across his son watching the movies, he decides to reuse the video cassettes to record TV reports on the war in Kosovo. A year later he realises that the sequences he thought he had eliminated are reappearing amidst the images of war.

room 4Albanian Stories, 1997Video, colour, sound, 7’08’’

Shortly after arriving in Italy, the exiled Paci filmed his three-year-old daughter making up fairy stories for her dolls in which the usual characters in such folk narratives – a cow, a cat, a cockerel – come together surprisingly with “soldiers” and members of the

The Last Gestures, 2009Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan, & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

Brothers, 2010Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan

“international intervention forces.” This naïve, child’s vision conveys the particular yet universal character of conflict and the challenges of immigration and adapting to a new home.

Believe Me I Am an Artist, 2000Video, colour, 6’54’’

Suspected of child abuse for having photographed his daughters with a reproduction of his Albanian exit visa on their backs, Paci was called into a police station in Milan. This video replays the exchange that took place with the police, as he tries to make them accept that the photo is part of an artwork about expatriation. This absurd ordeal is both a battle to fully establish his status as an artist and a lesson in its fragility.

Home to Go [Un toit à soi], 20019 photographs, 103 x 103 cm each

In this series of photographs taken from a performance, the artist appears in his underwear, carrying on his back a fragment of a rooftop whose V-shaped form brings to mind the wings of a bird. A poignant metaphor for his personal experience as a migrant, Home to Go also conveys its oppressive weight. These images also evoke pictorial tradition by reviving the themes of the Carrying of the Cross and the fallen angel.

The Wedding, 200120 gouaches on paper mounted on wood, 22 x 28 cm each

On the twenty panels which make up this polyptych are tempera reproductions of a traditional Albanese

wedding held in the early 1990s. The hazy outline of the faces translates the gradual fragmentation and dilution of memory, while at the same time the pictorial set-up tends to elevate and give mythic resonance to these memories – a paradox which in Paci’s case evokes the experience of the exile.

Piktori [Painter], 2002Video, colour, sound, 3’27”

At the end of the dictatorship, small, semi-clandestine kiosks began to sprout in Albanian towns bearing a sign saying “Piktori” (painter). These artisans made oil paintings and copies of artworks, but also turned out all kinds of forged documents. Through its portrait of one of these painters who has become a forger in order to survive, this work is a meditation on the artist’s role in society and the relation between artisanship and artistic activity.

Turn On, 2004 Colour photograph, 145 x 190 cm

Turn On illustrates the exhausting daily wait of a dozen unemployed people on a square in Shkodra, hoping to find work. Icons of desperate social conditions, these men nevertheless keep going, hoping against hope for better days, waiting in the flickering light of a hand-held bulb.

Klodi, 2005Video, colour, sound, 40’

In a story that veers between tragedy and absurdity, an Albanian by the name of Klodi recounts the

The Column, 2013Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan, & Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich

details of his travels to Italy, Mexico and the United States, impelled by political and economic necessities. This reassembling of the parts of his life, which connects with Paci’s own experience of emigration, also stages the tension between the two poles of tragedy and play.

Passages, 2009Acrylic and watercolour on plaster and terracotta, 30.5 x 23.5 x 7.6 cm

Passages, 20102 watercolours on paper, 100 x 70 cm each

The Passages series constitutes a collection of “snapshots” taken from video or film sequences ranging from TV news to archive footage of traditional Albanian rituals. By pulling a scene out of the flux of images, Paci tries to transfer it to a state of stability, but without taking away its status as a moving image, in order to keep it in a suspended state. The time of the image is confounded with that of the pictorial act, taking on a new dimension.

room 5The Column, 2013Video, colour, sound, 25’40’’

Produced with the participation of the Jeu de Paume

Made specially for the exhibition, The Column articulates a reflection around the notion of productive efficiency which becomes a pretext for a poetic journey between East and West. This video shows the career of a block of marble, from quarrying in China to the maritime journey during which

sculptors transform it into a Roman column. The image of this factory-boat illustrates an extremely condensed economic strategy, in which delivery and production are parallel processes. As a counterpart to the video on show in the gallery, the column itself will be on show in the Tuileries garden outside.

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related events

z Young Visitor’s Tuesday Toursguided tour of the exhibition with the artist and curator Marta GiliTuesday 26 February, 6pm

z Children First!visit and workshop “Déplacements et transformations” [Movements and Transformations]Saturday 30 March and 27 April, 3.30pm

z talk on and around the exhibition by Maurizio Lazzarato, sociologist and philosopherTuesday 23 April, 7pm

z publication: Adrian Paci. Transit, texts by Adam Budak, Edi Muka, Edna Moshenson, Emanuela De Cecco, Éric de Chassey and an interview with the artist by Marta Gili and Marie Fraser, English/French, co-edition Jeu de Paume/Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal/Mousse Publishing, 160 pages, 23.5 x 28.5 cm, 35 €

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entrance

Jeu de Paume – extramural ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––

exhibition24 November 2012 – 26 May 2013 z Lartigue, Wide-Eyed Wonder (1894–1986)Château de Tours25 Avenue André-Malraux, 37000 Toursinformation +33 (0)2 47 70 88 46Tuesday to Friday 2pm–6pmSaturday and Sunday 2.15pm–6pmclosed Mondayadmission: €3; concessions: €1.50guided tours: Saturday at 3pm

forthcoming exhibitions21 March – 19 May 2013 z Satellite Programme 6, An Exhibition Without Texts. Suite for Exhibition(s) and Publication(s), Second MovementMaison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz16, Rue Charles-VII, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marnewww.maba.fnagp.frinformation 01 48 71 90 07daily 12 h-18 hclosed Tuesday and public holidaysfree admission

22 June – 3 November 2013z Bruno RéquillartChâteau de Toursfree admission

Jeu de Paume – Concorde ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––

exhibitions26 February – 12 May 2013z Laure Albin Guillot (1879–1962), the Question of Classicismz Adrian Paci. Lives in Transitz Satellite Programme 6, A Spoken Word Exhibition. Suite for Exhibition(s) and Publication(s), First Movement

23 October 2012 – March 2014z Espace virtuel, Print Error: Publishing in the Digital Age

forthcoming exhibitions28 May – 1 September 2013 z Lorna Simpsonz Ahlam Shibliz Satellite Programme 6, Suite for Exhibition(s) and Publication(s), Third Movement

practical information1, Place de la Concorde, 75008 Parisacces via the Tuileries Gardens, Rue de Rivoli entrancewww.jeudepaume.orghttp://lemagazine.jeudepaume.orginformation +33 (0)1 47 03 12 50Tuesday (last opening) 11am–9pmWednesday to Sunday 11am–7pmclosed Monday and 1 Mayz exhibitions: admission: €8.50; concessions: €5.50free admission to the exhibitions of the Satellite ProgrammeYoung Visitor’s Tuesday: free admission for students and visitors under 26 every last Tuesday of the month from 5pm to 9pmz guided tours and workshops: free admissionon presentation of the exhibition ticket of the dayTours for individual visitors with guides from the Jeu de PaumeWednesday and Saturday at 12.30pmFamily ToursSaturday at 3.30pm (except last Saturday of the month)by reservation on +33 (0)1 47 03 12 41/rendezvousenfamille@jeudepaume.org

Children First!visit and workshop for 7 to 11 year oldsevery last Saturday of the month at 3.30pmby reservation on +33 1 47 03 04 95/lesenfantsdabord@jeudepaume.org

Young Visitors’ Tuesday Toursevery last Tuesday of the month at 6pmz talks: free admission on a first-come, first-served basis

All photos: © Adrian Paci

© Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2013

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hIt is supported by NEUFLIZE VIE, its principal partner.

The Jeu de Paume is subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Les Amis du Jeu de Paume contributes to its activities.

This exhibition has been co-produced by the Jeu de Paume, Paris, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan.

In partnership with:

art PARIS

Curators of the exhibition:Adrian Paci Marta Gili, Jeu de Paume, ParisMarie Fraser, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal