Il cinema per Fabio Mauri

Galleria Richard Saltoun, Rome

The exhibition brings together works from the 1960s to the early 2000s, including film, found-object sculpture and installation, along the central theme of cinema.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 (Screens), made of unfolded canvas on frames and white cardboard serve as screen-drawing. Through this, Mauri offers us, simultaneously, a critique and analysis on the experience of our reality.