MAR Museo d'arte della Città - Ravenna

MONDINO ALDOlogica

16 November 2003 – 15 February 2004

Ravenna, Museo d'arte della città MAR

curated by Valerio Dehò and Claudio Spadoni

From 16 November, the City Art Museum of Ravenna presents a retrospective dedicated to the work of Aldo Mondino. Through a selection of over 150 works, the exhibition aims to document the Turin-born artist’s long career, from his early days with his Parisian works of the early 1960s to the pieces resulting from his most recent research.

Mondino’s artistic journey is characterised by a continuous exploration that alternates between perspectives on the present and historical references, freely drawing on those he considers his ‘masters’; an approach that leads him to reflect upon and revisit traditional themes from both painting and sculpture within a continuous process of experimentation.

Following his early years influenced by Surrealism, traces of which can still be seen in the Anatomical Tables of 1963, Mondino began painting in the 1970s with a conceptual intent in the King series (1970), a tribute to the passage of time and to painting, embarking on a body of work that occupied him throughout the following decade.

Mondino’s work is characterised by relentless experimentation, marked by a constant focus on the materials used, which are sometimes combined in unconventional ways, both in terms of their composition and the meanings they evoke.

The playful element plays an equally fundamental role, with an irony that does not shy away from the charm of linguistic assonances and wordplay—sometimes irreverent and blasphemous—between title and work, or in the uninhibited use of materials, with provocations that are never an end in themselves but are rooted in a highly personal and refined cultural imagination.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, his works were influenced by the allure of travel and the fascination exerted by Eastern cultures; a journey that may be real or merely imaginary, following a route from Morocco to Palestine, from India to Turkey.

The result is a body of work dominated by the theme of internationalism, or rather multi-ethnicity, which finds its expression above all in the Arab theme; a curiosity for other worlds that does not resolve itself in a superficial search for new horizons, but in an exploration always linked to the land, customs, history, and the magical rhythm of time.

It was during this period, therefore, that the Dancing Dervishes (presented at the 1993 Venice Biennale) came into being, along with figures of absorbed Arabs smoking hookahs, the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Iznik pieces, in refined oil-on-glass works.

The ongoing process of experimentation with materials finds expression in sugar sculptures, such as the mosaics also presented at the 1993 Venice Biennale, or in the celebration of chocolate sculptures, such as Gianduia, a tribute to Turin as the home of the famous chocolate.

In Mondino’s artistic practice, painting continues to play a privileged role; a form of painting he has been practising for some twenty years not on the ancient and traditional linen canvas, but on a plastic material, linoleum, in which, beyond the play on words, the interweaving of lines and patterns provides a perfect backdrop for a chromaticism that at times comes to resemble a mosaic.

The attention Mondino’s art pays to materials results in a continuous series of references and details drawn from the realms of diversity, exoticism and travel; it thus takes the form of a sort of eclecticism that is difficult to categorise within a specific artistic movement.

The exhibition will be documented in a catalogue published by Mazzotta, featuring a wealth of illustrations, critical essays by Claudio Spadoni and Valerio Dehò, an interview with the artist by Claudia Casali, and an extensive critical anthology.

Exhibition poster: MONDINO ALDOlogica

Barbisio (Williamsburg) / Il cappellaio Williamsburg, 1990

olio su linoleum

240 × 190 cm

Sadhu serpentine horn, 2000

olio su linoleum

240 × 190 cm

[Senza titolo], 1960

olio su tela

62 × 79,5 cm