Here and Now

The work recalls the idea that identity is created through repetition. The black copy is not simply a reproduction; it is a reduction and a reinterpretation. In that sense copying becomes a creative act, and what is missing from the copy becomes as important as what is kept.

The open structure of the main object resembles an architectural skeleton, or an organism in the middle of transforming, and that suggests reality is not something stable but a network of relationships, fragments and traces. The shadow thrown on the wall adds a further dimension, where the question becomes whether we are seeing the real object, its copy, or a passing appearance of both.

I see Radical Copies as a visual meditation on the paradox of the original and the copy, of presence and shadow, of building and ruin. The work does not function as a single object but as a relationship between the material structure and its dark reflection, which makes the act of copying itself the subject of the work.

Shown in Here and Now at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Tirana, 2025. The cycle builds with wood, textile and recycled material, and treats the space a piece occupies, and the time a viewer spends in front of it, as part of the work rather than the conditions for seeing it.

Verim Zendeli