Artan shabani biography of donald

Dear Artist,

Last night, I was visiting an old friend who is a bit of an art collector. He has a dozen or so of mine. Above our scotch, on a high, dramatic wall, I noticed a huge new painting by one of the popular New York artists. &#;What do you think?&#; he asked. I was unable to immediately say, but I was thinking the same as Olive Oyl on her planned marriage night when she was looking for some positive attributes about Bluto. &#;Large,&#; I said.

&#;Can you guess what I paid for it?&#; he asked. This question is always to me the least interesting part&#;like on the Antiques Road Show when they announce that the pre-Columbian figurine that she found in a Sally Ann for a dollar is actually worth thousands. I avoided my friend&#;s question, but he asked it again. Finally, frustrated with my inability to carry the ball, he volunteered: &#;Two hundred thousand,&#; he said. &#;U.S.,&#; he added. For a while the two of us just sat on this fact. Eventually he said: &#;I got a deal on it&#;it would have been a lot more if it had gone to a museum.&#;

There&#;s interesting stuff going on here. It has to do with the reason why art is not priced the same as other commodities. My friend was actually daring me to confront his foolishness. He was telling me that he had sufficient wealth that he could indulge himself with something that many others were sure to think was &#;bad.&#; For him, the gaucheness of the piece was part of its appeal. While he is what all, including his lovely wife, would call a fairly up-tight and conservative businessman, in his heart he longs for play, abandon, wildness, even frivolity. Beyond his need for conspicuous consumption this was another example where art had made a connection. There&#;s a kind of reverse snobbery here&#;my friend would be the first to admit it. When he had entered that New York gallery, he was allowing himself to be discriminating, to take advice, invest, and later share his fun with his less well-endowed friends. &#;I

The Pera Museum, Meşrutiyet Cad 65, Tepebaşı, Beyoğlu, Istanbul

The exhibition focuses on Albanian social realism through painting, poster and drawings, and it offers a selection of artworks produced under the dictatorship that aimed to spread socialism’s main principles among the proletarian.

Curated by Artan Shabani, an established contemporary artist, the exhibition investigates the impact of the communist ideology on Albanian visual arts during the second half of the 20th century. The selected artworks reflect the ideology that played an important role in the works’ dogmatic content. The exhibition offers an opportunity to become familiar with the culture and identity of Albanian people who had been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time, and centers around the daily life, working class, portraits of leadership, representations of the regime and a hopeful approach to upcoming generations.

• Image courtesy of the Pera Museum

  
  

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TIRANA, April 13 - New York-based Albanian contemporary artist Zinni Veshi and Zef Shoshi, one of Albania's most representative Socialist realism artists, are being showcased in two separate exhibitions at the National Art Gallery in Tirana.

Albania-born and educated Zinni Veshi, who has been living and working in the U.S. for the past two decades, is back home with a solo "Beyond the figurative" show .

Curator Krenar Zejno says Veshi's exhibition brings back contemporary oil on canvas paintings to Albania.

"Zinni Veshi is a human figure painter. Every painting of his is an exposà© of a portrait in group as well as an exhibition of portraits. It's like an aggregate of an underground train with everywhere profiles at unknown stations. New York, the city where the author lives and creates his colors, is like a coincidence station, typical to give the urban coloring," says the curator.

Zinni Veshi, who since has been living in New York where he also runs his own studio, says his paintings "express, articulate, and bring to life deep feelings, ideas or impulses that are fundamental to my existence.”

"There are three factors that comprise the essence of my works: oil paint as a material; non-descriptive means of expression; and the non-representational use of the human figure,” he has earlier said.

Veshi’s exhibition at the National Art Gallery will be open from April 14 to May

Meanwhile, veteran painter Zef Shoshi, brings a retrospective exhibition of more than five decades of experience as an artist.

This exhibition brings a collection of 38 works in genres like composition, portrait, landscape and pastel drawing, dating from to

Having graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy in the s, Shoshi is also known as the painter of the portraits of late communist dictator Enver Hoxha and important political events during the