Adrian Paci

Adrian Paci’s videos focus on the emotional yet stern possibilities present within the medium’s narrative and metaphorical structures. The retrospective “Lives in Transit,” which itself has traveled, with some variations, from the Jeu de Paume in Paris, exhibits the artist’s work for the first time in a museum in Milan. The included video Electric Blue, 2010, like the earlier Piktori, 2002, tells true stories about people who have created domestic microeconomies in order to get by—for example, a man who sells copies of porno films or an artist who paints false documents. The film’s climatic values of truth, crudeness, and intimacy are also echoed and parsed out in the gouaches on view, such as Secondo Pasolini (Decameron) (After Pasolini [Decameron]), 2006; in the acrylics on wood, such as Secondo Pasolini (I racconti di Canterbury) (After Pasolini [The Canterbury Tales]), 2008; and in the artist’s various early attempts in mixed media, reassembled here by the artist Giovanni De Lazzari, a former student of Paci.

Elsewhere, narrative is eliminated altogether in favor of the performative aspects of staging, as is seen in the videos Centro di permanenza temporanea (Center of Temporary Residence), 2007, which shows a group of men waiting on the boarding steps of a plane that will probably never take off, and The Encounter, 2011, which pictures the artist interacting with the people of a Sicilian town. Each person passes by, one after the other, creating a semicircular path in the piazza around Paci, who awaits them in the center. The Column, 2013, depicts the creation of a marble column aboard a ship during a journey from China to Europe. The camera’s focus on the faces of the artisan workers reminds the viewer of Paci’s interest in expression. The workers’ hard labor is contrasted with the silent image of the almost-finished column—a metaphor for identity transformed during migration.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.