ART CITIES: Rome-Fabio Mauri

Fabio Mauri’s practice encompasses performance, film, installation, found-object sculpture, mixed media works and theoretical writings to question readings of history and the associated power of language and ideology associated with the Second World War and the Holocaust. Sobering, direct, and poetically reflective, Mauri’s art addresses themes of communication and manipulation, and brings light to the ‘political dimension of the image,’ as it is projected and proliferated throughout contemporary society.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Richard Saltoun Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Il Cinema per Fabio Mauri” brings together Fabio Mauri’s works from the 1960s to the early 2000s, including film, found-object sculpture and installation, along the central theme of cinema. Mainly concerned with the politics of visual culture and communications, Mauri’s artistic practice is renowned multifaceted, embracing performance, film, sculpture, installations, and mixed media works. His interests were widely disparate, including publishing, film, theatre, literature. The artist’s youth was strongly marked by the events of the war and fascism, which had a profound impact on his artistic and intellectual legacy. The focal point of the exhibition is, “Rebibbia” (2006), a cabinet recovered from the Roman prison, belongs to the iconic “Projections” series. Started in the 1970s, the series consists of auteur films projected on unconventional historical media. The half-closed iron doors, on which Mauri projects “The Ballad of a Soldier,” a film by Grigorji Chukhraj, symbolise a multiplicity of lives both lived and gone. The events of the war, linked to the place where this object was retrieved, not only document a historical event, but also narrate a reality in which various human events intertwine and merge. In the center of the gallery stands “Pittura”, a large film projector in which the canvas serves as a film, encapsulating the continuous dialogue between painting and cinema in Mauri’s practice. Surrounding the space around it, the “Schermi”, made of unfolded canvas on frames and white cardboard serve as screen-drawing. Realised under the influence of Alberto Burri, these works celebrate the myth of cinema. The concept of the “Screen” emerged in early 1957 and remained essential to the articulation of Mauri’s oeuvre. The black band painted on the edges is a clear tribute to cinema, but also refers to television, computers and technology. Through this, Mauri offers us, simultaneously, a critique and analysis on the experience of our reality. Born in Rome in 1926, Fabio Mauri’s youth was marked by the events of war and Fascism—traumas and horrors that would profoundly impact and influence his life and work. Raised among writers and painters, Mauri befriended intellectuals in Italy’s new avant-garde, among them the novelist Italo Calvino, philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco, film director and aficionado Pier Paolo Pasolini, visual artist Jannis Kounellis, art historian Maurizio Calvesi and the writer Edoardo Sanguineti. ‘I patiently recompose,’ the artist said “with my own hands, the experience of the shameful. I explore its mental possibilities… I behave as if t ‘with my own hands, the experience of the shameful. I explore its mental possibilities… I behave as if that reality (that history) had not had its final condemnation, but were still adding further data right up to our time today”. A key element of Fabio Mauri’s work is his interest in man’s dual nature as both good and evil. He was not afraid to face death or, through his art, of revisiting and staging evil. This is why he chose, among other things, to reprint Nazi press photos in the work series “Manipulazione di Cultura” (1971–75). Here, we are brought face to face with evil, war and destruction. Fabio Mauri’s works comprise countless drawings, paintings, installations and what he himself called “theatre performances”. After World War II, many artists were reluctant and afraid to use the war and its history in art. Mauri accepted the challenge, actively using the war as the starting point of his works. Mauri’s works reflect his personal interests as well as the major issues of his day, including political ideologies, death, war and our perception of history. His endeavours testify to an urge to document things that tellingly reveal human behaviour and history right down to the smallest detail. Therefore, he also explores how film and media contribute to shaping the way we see the world.

Photo: Fabio Mauri, Cinema all’aperto [Outdoor cinema], 1969, Mixed media on paper, 70 × 100 cm, Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery

Info: Curator: Laura Cherubini, Richard Saltoun Gallery, Via Margutta 48a-48b, Rome, Italy, Duration: 19/3-27/4/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-19:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.richardsaltoun.com/