AlbumArte presents
Driant Zeneli
AlbumArte | VideoArtForum #2
First screening and discussion on Wednesday, February 24th at 7:30pm
Introduced by Cristiana Perrella
Screenings from Thursday to Saturday from 4pm to 9pm
AlbumArte Via Flaminia, 122 Roma
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Driant Zeneli is the protagonist of the second appointment of the event AlbumArte | VideoArtForum on Wednesday, 24th February 2016, with the first screening and debate open to the public at 7:30pm. The video-forum will be introduced by the curator Cristiana Perrella.
One bright day in May two years ago Driant Zeneli (born in Shkoder, Albania, in 1983) arrived as arranged in the offices of AlbumArte to present his work to us. He had heard good things about us, but he did not know that none other than Adrian Paci had also said many good things to us about him. Before showing us some examples of his work on his laptop, Driant enchanted us by explaining how he had begun to realize his various projects, talking about his father, who is a painter, his home in Albania, and the fact that he had always been attracted by the effort, as well as the failure, by the flight followed by the fall down to earth and then the attempt to get up and try again.
Although he had already represented Albania at the Venice Biennale in 2011, during that interview with us Driant had the enthusiasm and stubbornness of someone who firmly believes that what he has to say should be heard, and we immediately understood that Driant really did have something to say. We felt it from the way he spoke and the way he moved. Even today you can tell it by the way he looks at you and looks at what’s going on around him, always with an alert and watchful gaze. He almost seems to be equipped with something like special antennae that are continually connected with the world.
At AlbumArte | VideoArtForum, Driant Zeneli will present the most significant films of his oeuvre for the first time in Rome. These include When Dreams Become Necessity, a trilogy of films that he began in 2009 and completed in 2014, which attempts to redefine, by means of performative attempts, the ideas that we have about failure, focussing on the importance of concepts such as utopia and the dream. The notion of necessity is seen as essentially involving a long wait before one can realize something that is destined to end in an instant.
For the first time in Rome and for the first time ever in its entirety When I grow up I want to be an artist will also be presented a few days after the opening. Driant himself describes this as: “a work in which my father paints my portrait using the same technique he used for twenty years when he used to portray Enver Hoxha and other communist leaders during the regime in Albania. While he paints me in the video, my father tells me about all his attempts and desires to become an artist, and about the failures that do not exclusively depend on the individual man but also on the political and social conditions of his life. Other works are being added to this work although it is not a predetermined goal of mine. Everything happens randomly, starting from a discovery, from just stumbling across it.”
* Image: Driant Zeneli, When i grow up i want to be an artist (video still), 2007. Courtesy the artist and Prometeogallery of Ida Pisani, Milano, Lucca
PROGRAMME
Wednesday, February 24th from 7:30pm
– Screenings of When I grow up I want to be an artist (extract; 2007, video, color, sound, 21’55”) and When Dreams Become Necessity, Trilogy, 2009-2014: The dream of Icarus was to make a cloud. (2009, video, color, sound, 4’05’’), Some Say the Moon is easy to touch… (2011, HD video, color, sound, 05’15”), Don’t look at The Sun while you’re expecting to Cross it (2014, HD Video, color, sound, 04’39”). Following, there will be a debate introduced by Cristiana Perrella.
– Looped screening: All art has been …temporary (2008, video, color, 2’30”) and Too late (2008, video, color, sound, 1’00”).
Thursday 25th, Friday 26th and Staurday 27th from 4 to 9pm, non-stop screenings of:
– When I grow up I want to be an artist (integral version; 2007, video, color, sound, 21’55”)
– All art has been …temporary (2008, video, color, 2’30”)
– Too late (2008, video, color, sound, 1’00”)
Video Courtesy: the artist and Prometeogallery by Ida Pisani Milan, Lucca
Driant Zeneli | Born in 1983 in Shkoder, Albania, actually he lives between Milan and Tirana. Driant Zeneli’s work challenges physical and intellectual limits by staging and performing ironic and dreamlike situations, sometimes absurd. The latter takes place with performative attempts – weather only with his personal involvement or through others – in a process that experiences time, identifies with dreams, plays with reason while encountering the participation of the wider public. At the core of Zeneli’s performative actions, as well as in other works using filmic narrative, is the redefinition of the idea of failure, utopia and dream as the element that opens possible alternatives. In 2011 he represented Albania at the 54th Venice Biennale. In 2008 he won the Onufri International Contemporary Art Prize, Tirana, and in 2009 the Young European Artist Award Trieste Contemporanea. He has exhibited at: Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan (2015; 2010); IV Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Chile (2015); Viafarini, Milan (2014); GAM, Museum of Modern and Contemporaryart Turin (2013); White House Biennial, Athens (2013); KCCC, Klaipeda, Lithuania (2013); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2012); MUSAC, Castilla León. Spain,(2012); TICA, Tirana (2012); Prague Biennale 5, Prague (2011); 98 weeks Project Space, Beirut (2011); Trongate 103, Glasgow (2011); National Gallery of Kosove, Prishtine (2010); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa (2009); Studio Tommaseo, Trieste, (2009); National Gallery of Tirana, (2008).
Cristiana Perrella | Born in Rome in 1965. She is a curator and contemporary art critic. From 1998 to 2008 she directed The British School in Rome’s Contemporary Arts Program. From 2007 to 2009 she developed and implemented the SACS project for RISO, Sicily’s Museum of Contemporary Art, curating its activities from 2007 to 2009 and from 2012 to 2013. Since 2010 she is collaborating with Fondazione Marino Golinelli (Bologna) on annual project of art and science. As independent curator she has collaborated with numerous Italian and international institutions as well as MAXXI Museum, where in 2010 she curated an exhibition with which MAXXI was inaugurated, keeping on the collaboration with other three exhibition projects. From 2004 to 2010 she taught “Phenomenology of contemporary art” at the Faculty of Arts, University of Chieti. She currently teaches at the IED in Rome. She is one of the curators of the XVI Rome Quadriennale (2016). She has published several books and monographs, including the most recently one dedicated to Francesco Vezzoli, published in February 2016 by Rizzoli International. Since 2015 she is part of the Scientific Committee of AlbumArte.
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