Alberto Di Fabio, Over the Rainbow
Curated by Emanuela Nobile Mino
Galleria Pack, Milan, Italy
May 5 - September 11, 2010
For this exhibition, his third personal show at Galleria Pack, ALBERTO DI FABIO has created a project that is bound by a close relationship to the gallery’s recently renovated spaces. Large-scale paintings were created specifically for the show, punctuated by a series of medium-format artworks that highlight a more intimate and fragmented route. Taken as a whole, the artworks are characterized by new chromatic experimentation, including the use of fluorescent pigments and a juxtaposition of shiny tones and dark shades that suggests the idea of a totalitarian vision of landscape, a sort of observatory that provides a view out over the world as a whole: on one hand material and visible (Himalayan landscapes, cosmic geographies), on the other psychological and interior (traces of thought, score sheets for psychic rhythms), leading the viewer’s gaze further, deeper towards the ultra-terrain and as-yet-unexplored regions (luminous interplanetary paths, an enigmatic and celestial predominance of graphic elements).
As the curator EMANUELA NOBILE MINO writes in the critical text for the catalogue: “In referring to the famous song by Harold Arlen and sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), as well as by many other singers and musicians (including Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Jarrett, Jimi Hendrix and Rico Rodriguez, the Ramones, Deep Purple, Ray Charles and others), Over the Rainbow intends to suggest the idea of possible ulterior path, one that is parallel, beyond what we can see, transcendent and partially familiar and, precisely for this reason, intriguing. It is an invitation to look beyond contingent reality through imagery that turns abstract, redelivering man to the supernatural dimension (…).
Di Fabio has always led his audience along a backwards voyage from the visible to the invisible, accompanying them into a kaleidoscopic vision that forces the viewer to abandon a macroscopic perspectives and immerse himself in microscopic observation of the world in order to verify formal correspondences, geometric equilibriums and chromatic harmonies between individual natural elements, pointing out how a group of molecules and their organization into sophisticated structures (for example DNA) leads to a qualitative leap, generating that which we commonly refer to as “life.” This kind of process shares an enchanting correspondence with art, understood as the outcome of creation. The verb “create” contains the Indo-European root kere, also present in the Latin form of the verb “to grow” (Italian crescere), and in the name of the Roman goddess Ceres, an immortal being who embodies the principle of growth. Like nature, art is that which is derived from a group of factors and mechanisms, and is in turn capable of producing those of its own. It is a group of abstract units brought together into a single ordered structure (…).
ALBERTO DI FABIO was born in 1966 in Avezzano, Italy, and currently lives and works in Rome and New York. His most recent solo shows include: 2010, Over the Rainbow, Galleria Pack, Milan; Alberto Di Fabio, Gagosian Gallery, New York; (2009), Alberto Di Fabio, Gagosian Gallery, London; Insomnia, Galleria Pack, Milan; Sinestesia, Umberto di Marino, Naples.
Some of the artist’s more important group shows include: 2010, SuperEco, curated by Angelo Capasso, Emanuela Nobile Mino and Edicola Notte, ex-Aranciera del Semenzaio di San Sisto, Rome; 2008, XV Esposizione Quadriennale d’Arte di Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Punti di vista, Unicredit Private Banking, Naples; The Big Bang - Il cosmo visto con gli occhi dell’arte, Carlo Bilotti Museum, Rome; 2007, On the edge of vision, Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta, India; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India; 2006, Capolavoro, curated by Angelo Capasso, Palazzo Primavera, Terni; Napoli presente. Posizioni e prospettive dell’arte contemporanea, curated by Lorand Hegyi, PAN, Naples.
ALBERTO DI FABIO
OVER THE RAINBOW
CURATOR: EMANUELA NOBILE MINO
GALLERIA PACK
Foro Buonaparte 60
20121 MILANO - IYALY
