Albania: RUBIN MANDIJA

21/05/2007

RUBIN MANDIJA - tumulus

Rubin Mandija
was born in 1977.

Lives and works in Shkodra

Length of each head approx. 18 cm.
Material: uncoated clay and porcelain plates, 2005

Tumulus aims to induce a sharp sense of loss.

The title (that of an ancient graveyard) is endowed to a contemporary art work that celebrates the nowadays sense of the personal identity loosing.

The anonymity of the faces provides for the “victims” to be potentially anyone, and making the heads of earth tends to be akin to the title.

This crude serving in a typical Albanian plate is the momentum of the work.

view CV in comments

2 comments:

albaniavisualart said...: ::Education:

1996 - 2000; Academy of Fine Arts in Tirana, Albania

::Exhibitions:

2000 – Collective exhibition in the Academy Gallery in Tirana
2001 - Onufri 2001", Annual international exhibition and contest in National Gallery
of Arts in Tirana
2003 - The Changchun International Sculpture Symposium and Conference
in China
2003 - Collective exhibition in The Gallery of Arts in Shkodra
2004 – "Artiade 2004", The Olympics of Visual Arts. International exhibition of
visual arts, Athens, Greece.
2005 - „Young sculptors“, in the „Small“ Gallery, Tirana
2005 – "May", National exhibition in The Gallery of Arts in Shkodra
2005 – „Don Quixote“, artists colony, Ulqin, Montenegro.
2005 - Residence at International Summer Academy, Salzburg, Austria.
2005 - Tirana Biennale 3, Tirana, Albania.

::Public comissions

"Symbiosis" in the World Sculpture Park in Changchun, China

::Awards and distinctions:

1994 - Third National prize of Red Cross
2002 - Special prize of Municipality of Shkodra in sculpture
2004 – Official poster of „Artiade 2004“; 21 May 2007 at 07:33
ars novum Group said...: For further details about ARTIADE goto:

http://www.artiade.org

or see new press release:

http://artiade.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/hollywood-welcomes-olympic-artists/; 24 March 2008 at 04:02

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CONCEPT

Albania

A New Visual (E)vocation wants to emphasis the interesting new artistic mood in the country trough pieces of art that are strongly connoted by an evocative atmosphere; each one in fact, in different ways, is deeply metaphoric and has in itself the aim of being strongly representative of the reality, but above all it wants to show the real feelings of each artist about the world, especially the country and the society they live in. Even the ones who seem to relate only with their inner inside evocate indeed the fact of being part of a country which is complicated and fascinating at the same time.

Albania can be seen as a ‘virgin’ land, one that has risen and looked with a critical eye over the world of the contemporary art scene indeed because has been out of it for such a long time. A world which so often appears bored with itself, its mechanisms of exploitation and violence, its attempts to defile the simple expressive ability of an image to move, twisting it into some perverse intellectual game.

This exhibition wants to experience its artistic vocation, which tries to evoke the sign of the past but also has a deep hankering after the future. The theme that I propose is simple. The interest is in all the visual arts that are to me, opportune to represent the sensibility of the country: visual Art that looks at Albanian society and its history, that investigates its roots, its memory, the prerogatives of the language, the sense of belonging to a geographic place, the sense of being a depositor of history that is actually changing under the deep mark of fast and heavy globalisation. My aim is to investigate all this trough the sensitive eye of each artist exploring the all around , utilizing the aesthetic approach to the reality with a critical and sharp point of view.

The pieces of art also consider the experiences of separation, going away physically or ideologically from one’s own culture; the interactions, the clutches, the affinities and contrasts between the known and unknown, the influence of myths, its heritage, the conditioning of the national flag; but above all the exibition tries to go deeper into understanding into the real how and why of their artistic production. How can they give new meanings to ideas recollected from a past age or recovered from underneath the cultural conditioning?

My aim is essentially a search and documentation of change trough an evocative sign. The change that comes from distress, from regret; the change that is springing up as a result of new intellectual forces; the changes that result from the popular and the spontaneous; and the change that is coming about as a consequence of contemporary artistic expressions, which desire, above all else, concepts and events in evolution.

TIMES

Preliminary Phase : January to March 2007. Research about the Albanian history of art from the neolitic ceramic to the contemporary visual art, in particular about the latest albanian artists working abroud and the great development that has been given to the visual arts during the last few years either in the public galleries and in the private ones. First Phase: March-May 2007. Staying in Albania, research, finding the artists, keeping and developing the preliminar contacts with albanian public and private institutions. Second Phase: June-July 2007. Art Exibition in Scutari. August-September 2007. Art Exibition in Terni and Milan. Third Phase: Trying to estabilish new work contacts between italian galleries an foundation and the young albanian artists.