Edi Rama

21 x 32cm near fine paperback, a Hauser & Wirth library stamp at lower right-hand corner of front free end paper. Texts by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Edi Rama and others. Several conversations are included, one with Rama and Michael Fried, another Phillippe Parreno. Pages are orchestrated by dateline, each black and white or colour reproduction is accompanied by a short text. Edi Rama, a former professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and author of several books, he has served as Prime Minister of Albania since 2013. Rama, who was a practicing artist in Paris until being asked to return to Albania as Minister of Culture in 1998, explains that he initially started making his autonomous, stream-of-consciousness drawings more from a sense of dislocation than a desire to create artworks: I found myself drawing almost all my working time whilst interacting with people in my office or on the phone. And I came to appreciate that I wasn't drawing my hand was. Rama gradually realized that his drawings were neither a diversionary activity nor an aesthetic indulgence but becoming an increasingly elucidatory necessity.…