Adrian Paci, 'per speculum', 2006, production still, copyright Jerry Hardman-Jones.
In Lewis Carroll's 'Through the looking glass', curious Alice wonders what life would be like on the other side of a mirror's surface, and to her amazement is allowed to pass over and experience the strange logic of that topsy turvy world herself. But what if all we could see on it were light, the catalyst for sight itself? A different, more meditative sense of speculation, of reflection on the way things might or might not be can be read into Adrian Paci's 'per speculum', a film specially commissioned by the Milton Keynes Gallery and Galleria Francesca Kaufmann in Milan, which will starting tomorrow, Wed 4 April, be on show at the former as part of Paci's solo exhibition, on through 13 May.
'per speculum' stars apparition-like children playing with mirrors and light within a timeless countryside background. The mirrors are fragments, shards of a bigger one that's been broken; the children use it to reflect the sparkling light of the sun as they perch on branches of a large tree, which then seems to be itself the light's origin. The process overtly alludes to a passage from St Paul's 'First Letter to the Corinthians' (13:12), one from which the film's title stems: 'videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate tunc autem face ad faciem' ("At present we see indistinctly, as through a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known"). The stunning, shimmering light hits the viewer as an open-ended platonic question mark: what is knowledge? what is wisdom?
The project was filmed on location in Northamptonshire; the participants are local school children. A classically-trained Albanian artist based in Milan for a substantial amount of time, Paci has something interesting to say on the theme of displacement, adaptation, and journey from innocence into experience; in the way it shifted methodologically and opened up to different ways of seeing, his work as a whole can be seen as entirely driven by this preoccupation - to change, to self-transform, always echoing back to one's former perspective.
Paci's interest in religion is evident in other sections of the exhibition, which will include 'The Pasolini Chapel' (2005), a series of painted film stills (gouache on wood) from Pasolini's controversial films 'The Gospel According to St Matthew' (1964) and 'Mamma Roma' (1962) adorning the inner and outer walls of a small hut placed in the middle of the gallery. Both of these films controversially focused on Christianity's radical, revolutionary potential and call for change. Another work included in the exhibition delves into the meaning of light in Paci's work - stills from 'Turn On' (2004), a film featuring a group of men from Paci's home town Shkodra, playing with the effects of light and dark, as they consider their changed lives.
As Ann-Sofi Noring of the Moderna Museet has written, Paci 'does not shy away from the seemingly banal'. From ordinary, contemporary characters and frames he transmits a sense of the eternal.
Don't miss these special events scheduled to coincide with Paci's exhibition:
Artist in Conversation
Thursday 5 April, 7-8pm, £5 (£3)
Paci discusses themes and influences in his practice with writer and curator Teresa Gleadowe.
Panel Discussion: In Context - Art and Film
Wednesday 18 April, 7-8pm
A new media curator, an advertising executive, a cameraman and a film critic will consider the crossovers between fine art film making and commercial film and advertising.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
ADRIAN PACI
4 April - 13 May 2007
Milton Keynes Gallery
900 Midsummer Boulevard
Central Milton Keynes MK9 3QA
T: +44 (0)1908 676 900
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