Centro Di Permanenza Temporanea. A single channel video installation. The title of the work refers to the camps in Italy that detain illegal immigrants. The artist's video reveals the plight of those displaced by war, poverty or inequality, the futile attempts to attain a destination they desire and ultimately the entrapping reality of a life caught between deportation and conflict. Produced during the artist-inresidence at New Langton Arts, San Francisco.
Centro Di Permanenza Temporanea
Smith-Stewart is pleased to present CENTRO DI PERMANENZA TEMPORANEA, the solo
New York gallery debut of Albanian-born Milan-based artist ADRIAN PACI.
Adrian Paci’s body of work -- spanning video, sculpture, installation, photography and
painting – is shaped by his life experiences. Trained as a classical painter at the Art
Academy in Tirana, his practice took a radical shift when he left Albania and began a new
life in Milan. For him, art and life became interchangeable, one flowing into the other.
Through his practice, Paci positions himself in socially charged situations, engaging his
personal history in an effort to discover or recover how we live. By creating works
situated in the everyday, Paci reveals how our lives are intersected and how we are
bound by our environmental circumstance.
At Smith-Stewart, Paci presents the U.S. debut of “Centro Di Permanenza Temporanea”,
2007, a single channel video installation. The title of the work refers to the camps in Italy
that detain illegal immigrants. Paci’s video reveals the plight of those displaced by war,
poverty or inequality, the futile attempts to attain a destination they desire and ultimately
the entrapping reality of a life caught between deportation and conflict. In doing so, Paci
comments on the cruelty and even absurdity of our socio-political status, to expose how
identity is determined by an evolving global reality.
The video’s setting is an airport runway, where a large number of men and women are
first seen approaching and then gathering on a mobile stairway, which appears to be
attached to an airplane. But as the camera focuses in on the stairs and the crowd of
ascending people and then slowly pans back, it is apparent that there is no waiting plane
- just a stairway to nowhere.
The men and women are an island in the middle of an empty runway. In the sun-blasted
distance, jets and planes take off and touch down, but they remain stranded in line with
no destination. In our post-9/11 climate, our national identity has never been of greater
significance, Paci’s powerful portrait reveals the universal struggle of life in a permanent
state of transition.
“Centro di Permanenza Temporanea” (2007) was produced during Adrian Paci’s artist-inresidence at New Langton Arts, San Francisco.
In addition to the show at Smith-Stewart, Paci’s new paintings and a video from 2002 will
be featured in an exhibition at Peter Blum Chelsea, New York. For further information,
please contact Simone Subal at chelsea@peterblumgallery.com. His work can also be
seen in the group exhibition “Senso Unico” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York.
Adrian Paci was born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania. He lives and works in Milan. In 2008,
his work will be the subject of solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover,
Bonnier Konsthall, Stockholm, CCA, Tel Aviv, and the Stuk, Leuven. Selected solo
museum exhibitions include Milton Keynes Gallery, Dortmund Museum, Galleria Civica di
Modena, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA,
New York, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
His work has also been included in the 15th Biennale of Sydney, 51st Venice Biennial,
2004 Biennale di Sevilla, 2003 Tirana Biennial and Manifesta 3, Lubiana.
Opening: Saturday, November 10, 7 - 9PM
Smith-Stewart
53 Stanton Street, between Forsyth and Eldridge - New York