FABIO MAURI

‘Fabio Mauri. Amore Mio’ is a testament to the artist’s early engagement with themes that would come to define pop art, before the movement became widespread in Europe after US artist Robert Rauschenberg won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1964. The 1964 Biennale marked a pivotal shift: artistic circles in Europe, particularly Italy, saw the arrival of American pop art as a sign of US expansionism, at a time where artists like Tano Festa, Fabio Mauri, Mimmo Rotella and Mario Schifano were already experimenting with similar ideas.

‘Jiggs and Maggie’ became ‘Arcibaldo e Petronilla’ and a cutting illustrating its two main characters at the cinema, can be seen in ‘Arcibaldo I’ (1960). Extending the scene with expressive mark-making in ‘Arcibaldo II’ (1960), a box drawn in black ink resembles the cinema screen, a symbol of our multimedia-dominated society repeatedly used by Mauri. ‘Arcibaldo III’ (1960) sees Mauri collage the words ‘The End’ as a play on the classic cinematic trope.

In a radical gesture, Mauri voids his monochromatic screens of any content, narration and ideology, emphasizing that ‘the canvas is no longer. It is exchanged with a distinctively ‘active’ breeding ground for culture and the fermentation of ideas.’ Whilst these works often comprise pure white screens that extend out from the frame, other examples of Schermi appropriated images of celebrities like singer Frank Sinatra or symbols referring to the actress Marilyn Monroe or took the form of drawings on paper, characterized by their flatness or abstract patterns.

The projected image became a central motif that defined Mauri’s oeuvre. The installation ‘Amore Mio’ (1970) plays on this idea, requiring viewers to navigate the dark environment by swiveling a fixed light to reveal the surrounding works. Consisting of 18 silkscreened canvas elements that form the immersive and interactive space, this work has remained unseen since its first showcase in 1970 during the legendary exhibition of the same name presented by Achille Bonito Oliva at Palazzo Ricci in Montepulciano, Italy. Further silkscreens include works entitled ‘Gangster’ (1974), portraits of the notorious figure Al Capone that testify to Mauri’s engagement with the international pop art movement.

Exploring the idea of the screen as a filter through which we perceive reality, Mauri said, ‘the screen had become a sort of witness to history, an opaque mirror, but one that captured the projections of the world and contained them.’ Mauri proposes through his works a questioning of the ‘real’ by commenting on the proliferation of screens in modern society—an observation that holds even more relevance today.