by Adrian Deva
Painting as a Conceptual Craft + Looking Forward

Adrian Deva will present “Painting as a Conceptual Craft + Looking Forward”. The English word Painting, being rooted in the word paint, carries strong connotations of a craft. Ζωγραφική (zo̱grafikí̱), the Greek word for painting that literally translates in English as graphing of life, seems to be more concerned with the conceptual purpose of painting rather than the craft aspect of it.

For centuries the dominating form of visual arts, painting today seems more diverse than ever. From being on the forefront of new ground-breaking aesthetics to unnecessarily regressive, second-rated and stale (and everything else in between), painting seems to still hold on to fairly narrow cultural understandings and interpretations of what it is and what it is supposed to do.

Being stubbornly rooted in the practice of painting, Adrian Deva’s work explores issues of cultural expectations, (un)accessible aesthetics and kitsch, and painting as a form for conceptual explorations in today’s world of moving images, unavoidable sounds, and intrusive visual material specifically designed to attract our attention.

Looking Forward, the second part of the lecture covers thoughts on the role of art educators and traditional educational institutions in today’s continuously changing landscape of information transfer and means of generating of new knowledge.

Adrian Deva is a painter and a lecturer at Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. He studied painting at the University of Prishtina (BFA 1998) and Eastern Michigan University (MFA 2004). His work has been exhibited since 1995 in numerous shows including Dodona Gallery (Prishtina), Museum of New Art (Detroit), SiningMakiling Gallery University of Philippines (Philippines), FórumEugénio de Almeida, Evora (Portugal), Artcite Gallery, Windsor (Canada), University of Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Ranelagh Arts Center, Dublin (Ireland) and other venues in United States and abroad.

He has taught in higher education since 2004 and is interested in the role of educational institutions, the necessity of broad-scope interdisciplinary education, and challenges that tomorrow’s artists and designers will face.