Aldo Mondino
Souk mondano, 18 March – 29 April 2023
Solo exhibition · NP-ArtLab, Padua
EVENTS
NP-ArtLab, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 1/C, 35122 Padua. In collaboration with the Galleria Umberto Benappi in Turin and the Archivio Aldo Mondino.
NP-ArtLab is an exhibition space in Padua for modern and contemporary art. With Souk mondano it presented the works born from Aldo Mondino's travels in the East: dervishes, painted carpets, merchants and souks.
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View of the exhibition at NP-ArtLab, Padua
The exhibition
NP-ArtLab, in collaboration with the Galleria Umberto Benappi in Turin and the Archivio Aldo Mondino, presented Souk mondano, an exhibition devoted to the work of Aldo Mondino and centred on the works born from his travels in the East. An eclectic and versatile artist, Mondino moved through different styles and influences, including twentieth-century European art, surrealism and pop art, without ever belonging to groups or movements. He always refused to be placed in art-historical pigeonholes, preferring an approach rich in experiments with materials, techniques and subjects: an endless search, a stubborn need to experiment that produced a varied body of work in constant dialogue with the history of art.
The travels
The works on show alluded to the impact that the artist's travels, metaphorical as well as physical, had on his work. Mondino accompanied this flânerie of his with the curiosity and irony that are the hallmark of his work, translating into Mondinian terms what he had seen on his wanderings. From the 1980s his journeys became more frequent, bringing him face to face with what he himself called «an East that begins in Morocco and continues into Palestine, where I glimpse a fascinating parallel between prayer and the intensity of attention in painting in a conceptual way».
Dervishes, carpets and souks
From this analogy between spirituality and the painterly gesture came the Dervisci (Dervishes), dancing figures painted on linoleum, shown at the 1993 Venice Biennale with a performance by whirling dancers from Turkey. Also on show were the merchants and souks, the Iznik works in enamel on glass, which make painting look like ceramics, and the carpets painted on eraclite, an industrial building material: laid on the floor and hung on the walls like washing out to dry, they turned the exhibition space into a real souk.
View of the exhibition at NP-ArtLab, Padua
The carpets painted on eraclite, hung like washing out to dry
The Dervisci series, oil on linoleum
Exhibition preview
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