ALDO MONDINO sessantasettanta
from 23 June 2016 to 09 October 2016
Brescia
ALDO MONDINO sessantasettanta
An explosion of creativity with patent leather shoes
The exhibition presents a rich selection of works from Aldo Mondino’s creative output of the 1960s and 1970s.
THE WORKS
As the title suggests, the exhibition focuses primarily on a selection of works from the 1960s and 1970s: the most explosive and forward-looking period of his entire creative career. It certainly does not cover all his experiences from that time, but it provides us with the most significant cultural and expressive elements that characterised him. I found myself saying to the gallery owner – my direct counterpart in that task – as we arranged the works during the first phase of the installation, when he asked for my opinion. Who knows? Perhaps also to reassure myself about the choice: “To me, these seem like works that attempt to conceptualise a Pop Universe, from which he was perhaps trying to break free at the time!” I do not know if this statement has any critical basis. I was actually thinking of an alternative path to that of Andy Warhol, who transcended Pop Art through a dialectical deconstruction.
It seemed to me, or appeared for a moment, that Mondino had dissolved it into his own ego, simply to strip any logo or object of its mass-produced nature and transport it mentally into a different state. More of a heir to New Dada, then: Jasper Johns foremost among them. A hazy discussion perhaps, but whilst putting together an exhibition, minds run wild without inhibitions; yet, the more I look at these works as the installation nears completion, the more I find the path taken by our artist at that crucial moment of change to be truly original.
’S PHOTOGRAPHS With the dawn of the 1970s, a further phenomenon in art communication gained momentum: that of photographers capturing artists at work or in their daily lives.
There was the pioneer Ugo Mulas, who threw himself into this activity, perhaps not yet with the participatory collaboration that emerged later, but with a more clinical and documentary eye – apart from his experience with Fontana at work, through which he perhaps intended to stake his own claim to the artistic milieu, masterfully capturing not only a view of art but the very act of living it. Mondino too, and he in particular due to the excess he displayed in communicating his work and himself on countless occasions, had his own ‘champions’ of the camera in tow. Fabrizio Garghetti, who, perhaps spilling over into the environment and circumstances as much as Mondino himself, acted with the drive of complicity, and Paola Mattioli, who, for different, more intimate and personal reasons, captured his domestic moments, also revealing the everyday life in which his work took shape. As for the former, in constructing the substantial photographic sequence that we intended to be the true opening of our catalogue, we were spoilt for choice, so numerous were the occasions of Mondino posing, at work and in the strangest of situations, which he seized on the spot with a sort of magical eye that knows how to freeze the quivering moment of action. From Paola, we have selected a few extracts from a sort of beautiful and emotionally engaging ‘album for two’, in which she explores, in all its complexity, the specific relationship that bound them together. The images reveal that there is no chance about their encounters, only the everyday. Finally, there is him, Aldo Mondino, the actor always on stage, a sort of elegant Buster Keaton, capable of playing any role that ultimately leads back to the same condition: his life as an artist.
ALDO MONDINO sessantasettanta
project gallery kanalidarte curated by Piero Cavellini
23 June / 9 October 2016
Via Alberto Mario 38 Brescia
The exhibition presents a rich selection of works from Aldo Mondino’s creative output of the 1960s and 1970s.
THE WORKS
As the title suggests, the exhibition focuses primarily on a selection of works from the 1960s and 1970s: the most explosive and forward-looking period of his entire creative career. It certainly does not cover all his experiences from that time, but it provides us with the most significant cultural and expressive elements that characterised him. I found myself saying to the gallery owner – my direct counterpart in that task – as we arranged the works during the first phase of the installation, when he asked for my opinion. Who knows? Perhaps also to reassure myself about the choice: “To me, these seem like works that attempt to conceptualise a Pop Universe, from which he was perhaps trying to break free at the time!” I do not know if this statement has any critical basis. I was actually thinking of an alternative path to that of Andy Warhol, who transcended Pop Art through a dialectical deconstruction.
It seemed to me, or appeared for a moment, that Mondino had dissolved it into his own ego, simply to strip any logo or object of its mass-produced nature and transport it mentally into a different state. More of a heir to New Dada, then: Jasper Johns foremost among them. A hazy discussion perhaps, but whilst putting together an exhibition, minds run wild without inhibitions; yet, the more I look at these works as the installation nears completion, the more I find the path taken by our artist at that crucial moment of change to be truly original.
’S PHOTOGRAPHS With the dawn of the 1970s, a further phenomenon in art communication gained momentum: that of photographers capturing artists at work or in their daily lives.
There was the pioneer Ugo Mulas, who threw himself into this activity, perhaps not yet with the participatory collaboration that emerged later, but with a more clinical and documentary eye – apart from his experience with Fontana at work, through which he perhaps intended to stake his own claim to the artistic milieu, masterfully capturing not only a view of art but the very act of living it. Mondino too, and he in particular due to the excess he displayed in communicating his work and himself on countless occasions, had his own ‘champions’ of the camera in tow. Fabrizio Garghetti, who, perhaps spilling over into the environment and circumstances as much as Mondino himself, acted with the drive of complicity, and Paola Mattioli, who, for different, more intimate and personal reasons, captured his domestic moments, also revealing the everyday life in which his work took shape. As for the former, in constructing the substantial photographic sequence that we intended to be the true opening of our catalogue, we were spoilt for choice, so numerous were the occasions of Mondino posing, at work and in the strangest of situations, which he seized on the spot with a sort of magical eye that knows how to freeze the quivering moment of action. From Paola, we have selected a few extracts from a sort of beautiful and emotionally engaging ‘album for two’, in which she explores, in all its complexity, the specific relationship that bound them together. The images reveal that there is no chance about their encounters, only the everyday. Finally, there is him, Aldo Mondino, the actor always on stage, a sort of elegant Buster Keaton, capable of playing any role that ultimately leads back to the same condition: his life as an artist.
ALDO MONDINO sessantasettanta
project gallery kanalidarte curated by Piero Cavellini
23 June / 9 October 2016
Via Alberto Mario 38 Brescia
Opere correlate
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