d r I a n T z e n e l I ,
e x e r C I s e o F a d r e a m
Born in 1983 in Shkoder, Albania,
Driant Zeneli lives between Milan and Tirana.
His approach to art started from the influence
of his father (the subject at the center of the
video When I grow up I want to be an artist,
2007), who was the painter of portraits of the
leaders of the Albanian Communist Party. At
thirteen he began to frequent the studio of a
sculptor who introduced him to classical de-
sign as an introduction to proper training at
the Academy, which was later completed with
numerous stays abroad, especially in Italy
where he exhibited, among other places, in
2011 at the Venice Biennale. Dreams, caught
in all their visual and semantic variations,
are one of his primary subjects of investiga-
tion. From the beginning, in fact, he addressed
this theme by articulating his research with
different methodological, iconographic, and
iconological solutions, examining it with an
infinite number of intellectual and emotional
nuances that sometimes take the form of uto-
pia, nightmare, hope, or failure. However, in
his practice he always remains faithful to a
principle: the dream, as a natural phenome-
non, has no pre-established characteristics,
and above all any cultural, moral, or ideologi-
cal positions that human beings project on
it. Consequently, it is best not to try to analyze
it just by itself, but in relation to the multitude
of interpretations to which it lends itself and
that conventionally accompany it. Thus, from
a subjective manifestation of the unconscious,
the dream is translated into a social prototype
through which we can examine the surroun-
ding reality at the universal level, which fun-
damentally is the real objective of the artist.
We see this, for example, in the trilogy When
Dreams Become Necessity (2009-2014) which
includes the films The Dream of Icarus Was
to Make a Cloud (2009), where the artist
tried to create a cloud while flying a paragli-
der; Some Say the Moon is Easy to Touch
(2011) in which he launched himself with a
bungee jump to touch the moon (reflected in
the lake under the launching bridge) on the
day it is the minimum distance from the earth;
and Don’t look at The Sun While You’re Ex-
pecting to Cross it (2014) when he decided
to cross the sun after the Lovejoy comet in
2011 passed the perihelion while remaining
200
Those who tried to put
the rainbow back in the sky,
2012, 7'50”
Courtesy of the artist e / and prometeogallery
di Ida Pisani Milan / Lucca
