Mario Arlati: Incomplete Flags, Lugano

The Contini Art Gallery presents the new creations by the artist Mario Arlati at the Aimo Room Concept Store in Lugano. The exhibition brings over forty canvases where the flags of various nations are reinterpreted according to the technique of the master Arlati. The Incomplete flags series is based on a European Union project and is a tribute to the artist Jasper Johns painting. Arlati puts some emphasis on the ‘incomplete’ term, highlighting the active role of the spectator - who becomes an emancipated spectator, according to the definition of Jacques Rancière – where the spectator is being invited, to complete the work with his own eyes and intuition, behind the artist's input. The use of fabrics incidentally stained by the artist's brush or fabrics from dye house production being recycled by the artist, is a reminder to Arlati's poetics that stem from the contemporary art movement Arte Povera and at the same time a new artistic gesture. Often defined as informal-matter oriented, Mario Arlati's art escapes any stylistic definition. The "bodies" of his paintings are much more, they are earth and nature that suddenly tear up to let you glimpse through cracks, breaks, color, and life. The colors range from colder registers such as blue and black (shadows and darkness) to yellow and red (light and passion).