Mario Airò

As the master for the autumn time 2006 the Foundation has selected Mario Airò.

Mario Airò was born in 1961 in Pavia and divides his time between Milan and Radda in Chianti.

The work of Mario Airò develops from a desire to induce strong emotive feelings and sensations within the spectator. To achieve this he employs objects, images, sounds and light sources in his work, whose interplay with the idea of delicacy, and the effects of enchantment and seduction transform space and envelop the mind of the viewer. The insistent perfection of his work is capable of investing these exhibition spaces with a dream world quality rather than real. His oeuvre represents intimate moments of life filtered through desire or through affective memory, which clip reality’s wings, narrowing it down to a few essential elements, destined to be amplified to excess.

One of the most influential artists of his generation, one-man and group shows of his work have been held in Italy and abroad; these include: participation in the Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2005; the Kwangju Biennial and Spazi atti/Fitting Space: 7 artisti italiani alle prese con la trasformazione dei luoghi at the PAC Contemporary Art Pavilion in Milan, 2004; In 2001, he had a one-man show at the GAM in Turin, La stanza dove Marsilio sognava di dormire… e altri racconti (The room where Marsilio dreamt of sleeping… and other tales) at the Valencia Biennial and the permanent public works project Luci d’Artista in Turin; in 2000, a one-man show of his work was organised at the Kunsthalle in Lophem; and we must not forget his participation in the 1997 Venice Biennial. His work has also been exhibited in group shows in the Castello di Rivoli, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the S.M.A.K. in Ghent and the Triennial in Milan.