The Bernier-Eliades Gallery, is pleased to present the exhibition of Mario Airò “The gap in between”, on Thursday, September 22, 20:00-22:00.The tittle of the exhibition is inspired by a quote from a famous statement by Robert Rauschenberg: “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two.” (Artist’s statement in Dorothy C. Miller, ed., Sixteen Americans, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959), 58.)

The gap is a place where art modifies life and life modifies art.The idea of transforming art in order to get it so close to life that you could not see anymore the border between the two, was the starting point of Airò’s research.

According to the artist, a work of art has a tangible presence in life: we meet and experience it. As in love, everything happens after that.
Airò works with the belief that at the beginning nothing is fixed, so that he can model ideas, linguistic structures, materials with freedom and invention.

In this exhibition there will be some of his latest works.
Calla lily: is a sculpture, a drawing in the air, whose function is to be the vase for a flower.
In Croce(Cross): a rough horizontal iron wire is counterposed with a shiny vertical bronze bar.
Aurora: a cut out of beechwood that resembles a hill horizon. Behind it, neon lights illuminate the wall like at dawn.
Grattage: is a drawing, made simply by brushing a sheet of paper with sand paper. It is glued on a piece of glass with neon lights on the reverse side so that we look through it like an X-ray. The result is an abstract, cloud-like shape.
In Il suono dell’acqua (The sound of water): a neon circle is bridged by a brass bar, like the trail of a flying fish jumping out of water.
En plein air: is a series of photographs taken in non- anthropic landscapes. A laser draws figures on a beach, on a mountain, a lake, a canyon and two trees facing each other. The drawings try to create a symbiotic relationship with the natural elements.
Da cosa nasce cosa (One thing gives birth to another): is a fiber optic installation created specifically to interact with a tree.

Like Vermeer and Medardo Rosso, the goal is to recreate the phenomenon the perception and through that evoke pictures in our imagination.