Fabio Mauri
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Organiza: Fundación Proa
Patrocina: Embajada de Italia en Argentina
Curador: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio 
Auspicia: Tenaris - Organización Techint
6 de Septiembre - 10 de Noviembre 2014

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Fabio Mauri is considered one of the most important artists of the Italian scene in the sixties. Master of the Italian New Avant-Garde and founder of some of the most remarkable magazines that nourish the cultural debate in those years -like Almanaque Bompiani-, Mauri interacted with figures such as Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and with visual artists and curators as Maurizio Calvesi, Jannis Kounellis and Carlo Boatto.

According to Mauri, the artist not only operates as an "image maker", but he should also be an intellectual in movement to express in the world. In fact, since the beginning of his production in the late fifties, his visual and poetic artwork focus the debate on the culture of image and language as consumer goods of the cultural industry. This quality of his artwork has been able to deploy from Mauri´s own family cultural enterprises, including publishing industry, film and theatre. In the sixties, the boom for communication studies and ideological content start to integrate his artwork proposals. The artist condenses themes and motifs based on philosophical elaboration both from Italian and French authors, such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Giorgio Agambem. Mauri achieves a unique style, combining in his artwork images, forms and content, in a close relationship to the context.

The exhibition begins with Mauri´s artwork Ideology and Nature ´photographic record, from 1973. Entering the gallery room, we find the 36 patterns of Why do a thought pollutes the room?(1972), and in front, his large photography showing the artist with his friend Pier Paolo Pasolini on the film set of What is Fascism? from 1971. Both artworks refer to the ambiguous zone where thought becomes ideology and they both interact with the installation The Occidental or Wailing Wall, done in 1993 with old suitcases, bags and trunks that evoke not only deportee to death camps but all kinds of diasporas and migrations involving pain and tears.

In the space organized behind the wall, Mauri´s Screens reappear, fixed images, with and without figures, with or without texts. As in The End, communication alternates with silence, a Nietzsche’ metaphor for the beginning and the end of communication. Towards the exhibition’ closure, there are two legendary artworks: Jew Leather Harness and the objects of the performance Jewish, both productions from 1971 condensing Mauri's dedication to the creation of "work-tools” of discussion for freedom.

Along his artistic career he took part in major exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including a major retrospective of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, and numerous participations in the Venice Biennale in 1954, 1974, 1978, 1993, 2003 and 2009; and the prestigious Documenta of Kassel in 2013. In 2009, the year of his death, Mauri was appointed Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano.
 


Colaboration
Embajada de Italia en Argentina.

Curator
Giacinto Di Pietrantonio.

Organization and production
Marcella Campitelli.
Dora Aceto.
Sandro Mele. – Studio Fabio Mauri
Cintia Mezza. 
Cecilia Jaime. 
Mercedes Longo Brea. - Depto. Programación Fundación Proa

Expository Design
Giacinto de Pietrantonio.

Instalation 
Pablo Zaefferer.
Soledad Oliva.

Conservation 
Renata Knes.
Ivan Barlafante.
Claudio Cantelmi. – Studio Fabio Mauri 
Teresa Gowland. – Por Fundación Proa

Image Design 
Guillermo Goldschmidt.
Jorge Lewis.
Rafael Medel.

Education
Paulina Guarnieri.
Rosario García Martínez.
Camila Villarruel.

Educators
Noemí Aira.
Laia Ros Comerma.
Cora Papic.
Juan Carlos Urrutia.
 

Montage
Ezequiel Verona.
Marcela Galardi.
Marcela Oliva.
Jorge Opazo Ellicker.
Hernán Torres.
Eduardo Gismondi.
Esteban Campili.
Diego Mur.

Ilumination
Patricio Tejedor.
Claudio Del Bianco.

Translate
Roberto Rascella.
Jaime Arrambide.
María Clara Canzani.

Lenders
Studio Fabio Mauri, Italia.
Achille Mauri, Argentina.
 

Acknowledgments
Achille Mauri.
Embajada de Italia en Argentina, Instituto Italiano de Cultura de Buenos Aires.

Auspicia:
Tenaris - Organización Techint.