Maramotti Collection Shows Malick Sidibe
Essays by Mario Diacono Published
By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 26, 2010
During his years in Boston the exhibitions of the Mario Diacono gallery were legendary. The Italian born poet, curator and critic generally displayed a single work. The projects which entailed renowned international artists were accompanied by detailed and complex critical essays.
Some 30 of these essays have now been published by his Italian patron.
During his decades in Boston there were few if any local collectors up to the challenge of the work he showed. What a pity. Had these works remained in the city one day they might have found their way to the Museum of Fine Arts or the Institute of Contemporary Art. The ICA only recently has morphed from a kunsthalle to a collecting museum.
While he continued to travel his motive for living in Boston was to be with his American wife. I only met her once.
As a modest and one man, one work, operation Mario moved about with the changes of location of the art world. He started in the Fenway but was evicted by the Starn Twins when they took it over as their studio/ gallery Confusion/ Order. Mario remained friendly and showed their work.
From the Fenway he moved to South Street. For a time he was partners with Perry Rubenstein in New York. He returned to a space in Allston and finally to the window of Ars Libri in the South End.
There were frequent dinner parties after openings. Mario had a loyal following.
Often there were amusing incidents. Like when Julian Schnabel ordered us to move to the other side of the gallery. He wanted an unobstructed view of his painting. On other occasions we met David Salle or Francesco Clemente.
Mario arranged for me to meet Damien Loeb who he showed a couple of times. I was a frequent visitor to Loeb's New York studio. In the past couple of years, when he became more interested in making films, we lost contact.
What follows is the press release from the Maramotti Collection
The Maramotti Collection continues its activity with the exhibition of the photographer Malick Sidibé, a selection of more than fifty -mostly unpublished- photographs taken in Bamako in the 1960s-1970s period, images which have made Sidibé world famous: parties and studio portraits, pictures which tell us a long stretch of time in the history of Mali. Photographs fully unveiling the magic and excitement of life in Bamako in those years, when the desire to be together, of being part of history in its making seemed imperative. The show is completed by a selection of chemises from his archives, which document his work process.
Sunday 9 May the photographer will attend the exhibition where he will meet visitors and take photographs of participants.
On the occasion of the exhibition a volume edited by Laura Serani and Laura Incardona has been published by Silvana Editoriale.
After Margherita Manzelli’s project (on show until May 2), the Pattern Room will hold the project by Jacob Kassay, 26-years-old artist based in New York. His work, with a strong conceptual imprint, combines a minimalist elaboration with a profound knowledge of photographic technique that he transposes into the practice of painting. His project at the Maramotti Collection is composed of ten new pieces arranged in the Pattern Room space as a sort of big installation. The canvasses, after a mirror-plating treatment, look like reflective panels which are permeated with the ghost-like presence of the underlying paint while at the same time constantly transforming itself in a dialogue with the light and the silhouettes of objects and bodies in the surrounding space.
The exhibition catalogue, published by Gli Ori, includes a critical essay by Mario Diacono.
The book Iconography and Archetypes. The Form of Painting 1985-1994 by Mario Diacono has been recently published by Silvana Editoriale in collaboration with the Maramotti Collection.
The volume collects texts written over a long period of time to accompany exhibitions held in his gallery in Boston and New York. The critical text refers to more than thirty American, Italian and German artists, and the Maramotti Collection proposes it as an alternative to the publication of a traditional catalogue regarding the permanent collection: in fact most of the essays consider the artworks acquired by the collector, which are now in the permanent exhibition. The volume, in English, may be purchased in bookshops or online on the website of Silvana Editoriale.
Info:
Collezione Maramotti
Via Fratelli Cervi 66?
42124 Reggio Emilia?- Italy
tel. +39 0522 382484
info@collezionemaramotti.org
www.collezionemaramotti.org