“... Smile, look at the bird…” The typical words of the photographer shooting pictures of me when I was a kid came to my mind as soon as I was confronted with the images of Paci’s show “Happy people”. (...) The strange relation between the image, its power and their relation to the space made me ask myself the question what is a house to everyone of us? Is it just a shelter, or is it something more? How much of our intimate life it contains and to what extent do we share it with others? “Others”!! who are “the others”? Adrian Paci’s proposal for Home sweet home in relation to the interaction with the living space of the Gallery, tries to engage with these hidden questions, bringing up several ways of perception to those “small things”, that keep falling out of our attention in everyday life. Why do people always decorate their living space walls with images? And how do we do it? Normally by creating a particular space, almost a religious one, an altar, not for prayers but for an inner communication, with those moments that have left their mark in our lives. Adrian opens this altar of his to the public eyes and invites us to take a walk inside. Obviously there’s a deliberate difference in the images we see. They don’t tell any specific story, neither do they speak of any particular moment, and furthermore they are under a manipulative use from the artist, trying to compel to the viewer’s consciousness. The first ones are images of smiling couples, taken according to a “happy family” cliché. Those faces have already lost their individual identity, and what counts to them is the new identity of the couple. This first part of the show speaks about a general human habit that is changing, or better say vanishing. Whether one considers it from the emigrant point of view, or from a highly developed society one, the result is the same. For the first one, the unsecured and non-established life doesn’t allow for the creation of the “memories corner”. Therefore everything mostly remains enclosed in some boxes that are always last to open. Meanwhile for the latter, the new circumstances of the moving images and the digital system have changed the physical nature of the same “memories corner”, making them floating in a universe of numbers and digits, scaring the “photographer’s bird” away. Paci’s act therefore acquires a reflective stance. It doesn’t try to recall our attention on some “lost values of past times”, neither does it stand as a mockery towards them. It simply points out at this transitional phase of our space, making us perceive it in its complexity. The work of Adrian Paci has a lot to do with tracing a sort of identity of the being, searching through it’s specific layers. Using fairy tales and memories he defines an introspective search towards the surroundings. It’s not a mere coincidence though the artist’s choice of such a traditional medium as painting...''

 

 Gente felice by Edi Muka