The dirartecontemporanea 2.0 gallery is pleased to announce the online opening (www.dirartecontemporanea.eu), on Thursday 07th November at 7 PM of the personal exhibit "di_segni-works 2013" of Mafonso. 32 unpublished mixed techniques on cardboard and a "scratch", on the wall organized in diptychs and triptychs for an exploration of the complex mental universe of the artist made of signs (indices as Mafonso loves to define them) in a "dichotomy between ancestral time inside the man and the contemporary time" as the young curator Piernicola Maria Di Iorio writes. Coherent with the mental idea of do painting Mafonso one more time, clear headed, strongly soft, invites us to a free consideration about a never asleep marvel for a world of Greek-Roman Classic Beauty and our current world in which fluidly, quickly, where it's not possible to leave any sediment the Beauty lasts just the time of a newsmagazine or worse still the time of a tag. At the question of what it's needed today, Mafonso answered: "...a lucid rear guard. Only retreating even just a little step back it's possibile to extend the horizon".

Mafonso was born in Frattaminore (Na) in 1948, lives and works in Caserta. Self-taught person begins his artistic career in the early 70s living between Switzerland (Altdorf) and Italy (Rome - Milan). In those years ('72-'74) he makes a series of works focused on the recovery of artifacts through the use of colors using a paint brush and an instinctive -lyrical-primitivism painting style (cycle of works entitled Alla maniera degli altri).

He refers to Leonardo when he says that the painting is a mental thing and also at Picasso, De Chirico, Campigli and Mondrian (first mode). In the late 70's he is in Rome, he is one of the founders of the group Cosa Mentale; presented from Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco at the Architecture of Modern Art gallery in Rome in via Del Vantaggio. In '79 he moves permanently in the City where he frequents the artists of the so-called Pop-ltaliana (Festa-Angeli-Schifano) at the Gallery Studio Soligo, with them he establishes a relationship of friendship (in particular with Tano Festa) and a stimulating intellectual debate.

These were the years of cycles: La Dea Racconto, Le Grandi Strade piene, Racconti Solari, Le prime pietre del dopo 2000. Following cycles: Simbad, Krakatoa and Le Lune di Arqa, Make-Make, Isole di Tempo and Tribù in Esodo, Nevicate Acide, Vanno Tutti verso il Nulla, Contano solo i Cieli,Deserti and Dimore. He has exhibited in the major European capitals and cities: Rome, Milan, Paris, Basilea, London, Naples, Barcelona,Madrid. 54' International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia Pavilion Italy, Campania. He is consistent with the idea of "do" painting furthermore he has always proceeded through cycles of aesthetic projects in which the artwork is the golden figure of the world through which achieves the epiphany of the image.

Quoting the roman art critic Professor Lorenzo Canova: "Getting to the heart of the idea through a long process of sublimation and purification of the image, to reach the hot core of representation through a manual, intellectual and spiritual route at the same time. These are the assumptions that have always inspired and characterized the Mafonso's long journey of research from the series "In the manner of the others"(1972) up to "Dimore" of the recent years which despite its modernity is the result of a severe classical and Renaissance view of the artwork, a concept based on the irreplaceable basis of design that becomes a way to give a tangible form at the first idea that arises in the mind of the artist as a kind of divine spark. It is no coincidence that Mafonso preserves an ancient neo-Platonic heritage in his conception of art that is constantly inspired by that superior spark to try to keep alive the utopia of making sense of the world through the creative process of his work. Mafonso starts from a texture of signs that intersects each other as a mythological forge in a network from which originates a light and incumbent mail, the thin warp and the structure of plots that make the absolute system of a mechanism complex time and flawless at the same time. This system of drawing is what gives rise to all the Mafonso's works and represents the conceptual and stylistic basis of his work in its many forms, from painting to sculpture to installations.

dirartecontemporanea|2.0 gallery
Via e.caruso, 9
Caserta 81100 Italy
Mob. +39 333 4461479
dirartecontemporanea@gmail.com
www.dirartecontemporanea.eu

Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday
From 4pm to 8pm

Related images

  • 1, 2 & 3 Installation views
  • 4 Mafonso, 2013. di_segni #-VIII (n°2 works, cm 100 x 70), Mixed media + collage on cardboard
  • 5 Mafonso, 2013, di_segni #-XIV (n°2 works. cm 100 x 70), Mixed media + collage on cardboard
  • 6 Mafonso, 2013, di_segni #-XIII (n°2 works, cm 100 x 70), Mixed media + collage on cardboard