Mario Arlati | Enzo Fiore: Potenza del Colore | Potenza della Materia

For this winter season the Contini Gallery of Art, in its Cortina d’Ampezzo location – Piazza Franceschi 7 - is pleased to present an exhibition dedicated to two talented protagonists of the Contemporary art panorama: Mario Arlati and Enzo Fiore.

Color and substance will be featured as the main protagonists of this exhibition.

Color that seeks release and liberation from a prison of material that upsurges arrogantly and nonchalantly from the ridgy stucco of the works; a sense of commotion and mood is instilled in the observer. Material is used as a means of expression that supplants “traditional” artistic instruments (painting, design, etc.) and material used as the subject matter, the body and soul of an art form that is both powerful yet at the same time, refined.

Upon a simple close examination, Mario Arlati’s art could be defined as informal-materic, but as we look deeper there is the realization that it is not possible to connect his work to just any ordinary stylistic definition. The bodies of his paintings are much more. They are the earth - nature that is suddenly lacerated allowing a glimpse through cracks/crevices; they are color and life. The intensity of colors moves from dispassionate blues and blacks (shadows and darkness) to yellows and reds (light and passion). The white plaster which encases the work is not without sentiment; it’s an expression of purity and absoluteness. Arlati’s paintings express duality in both their form (plaster/color) and in their essence (body/soul).

The compositions of Enzo Fiore are full of matter and conceptual profoundness, whether it be a portrait or a landscape painstakingly reproduced from the original image. Not only do they express an evident proof of his elevated and unique technique, but the viewer’s attention initially captivated by the tri-dimensionality of the work, is slowly but consciously drawn towards the proximity of the work, to the material utilized by the artist, triggering a whirlwind of stupor, curiosity, reflecting upon and awe.

The organic substance - skillfully distributed - modifies the horizon of perception in each of us: life and death, creation and destruction; soul and substance co-exist and are evoked in every centimeter. The subjects from whom he extracts essence and personality are famous people, yet their greatness is lost in the materic composition, as if to demystify it or to remind us that dust can only return to being dust.