Adrian Paci

Adrian Paci was born in Shkodra, Albania, on January 28, 1969, and since 2000 has lived and worked between Albania and Milan. His artistic journey is closely linked to his homeland, as his personal life is inextricably intertwined with the history and political events of his native country, which he often alludes to in his works. “The society I lived in until I was twenty-two was highly politicized. Power was maintained by oppressing the individual, and when it crumbled, it brought misery and disorientation,” he reflects.

The son of a painter, Adrian Paci recalls how, as a child, he enjoyed flipping through his father's books, which he could not read because they were written in Russian, but he appreciated the images of Rembrandt, Leonardo, Velázquez, and Vermeer. In 1987, he enrolled at the Academy of Arts in Tirana, an institution that provided very conservative training focused on teaching figurative painting. It was during the 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, that the consciousness of Albanians awakened; they became aware of their country's not only economic but also cultural backwardness. For instance, in 1990, Paci organized a strike with other students from the Academy to demand free access to books by Picasso in the library: “In Albania, information about art reached as far as Impressionism. What came after was considered degenerate art, and any approach could be dangerous. [...] I remember the enthusiasm with which I read for the first time in 1993 The Spiritual in Art by Kandinsky or Klee’s texts.”

In 1992, Paci moved to Milan on a scholarship to study “Art and Liturgy” at the Beato Angelico Institute, where he experienced freedom and democracy for the first time. He returned to his homeland in 1995 as a professor of Art History and Aesthetics at the University of Shkodra. During these years in Albania, popular discontent began to emerge, and protests against the regime grew increasingly violent, culminating in anarchy in 1997 when rebels clashed with the government, looting arms depots and inciting guerrilla warfare. To escape the turmoil, Paci returned to Milan with his wife and two daughters, starting anew by working as a laborer, decorator, and restorer while continuing his artistic practice.

Leaving behind academic constraints, he began to experiment with techniques beyond painting, exploring video, photography, and installation: “Except for painting, which I studied for years, I feel like an amateur with other media. I rely more on the strength of the gaze than on technical tricks.” Adrian Paci feels the need to tell stories of everyday or extraordinary life, narrating personal experiences that transform into metaphors for collective existence, becoming a universal experience.

The Iannaccone collection includes numerous works by the artist, ranging from the sculpture Passages, created in 2009 using two bricks painted with a technique similar to fresco, to photography, such as Centro di permanenza temporanea, also from 2009, which references the contemporary drama of immigration, dedicating the work to a temporary residence for undocumented immigrants. One photograph depicts a group of immigrant passengers crowded on a staircase suspended over the long runway of an airport, waiting for a plane that will never arrive.

Among the paintings, there are several works based on home video footage from his wedding. Paci recounts in an interview with Angela Vettese: “That VHS tape contained an infinite number of frames, and in each of those frames were moments of a life I felt both a part of and estranged from; there were familiar people and environments, yet at the same time, I had left them behind. There was also an almost painterly quality in the grainy images of the video, a composition you could decide with the remote control in hand, [...] choosing from hundreds of possibilities that emerged by freezing the video’s movement.”