Mario Ceroli

sculptures and sandpaper
2RC Rome - 2002

Rememberance

2002

Mantellate Gallery

2002

Il diavolo

2002

Mantellate Gallery

2002

The cloud woman

2002

Mantellate Gallery

2002

The XNUMXRC presents the Mario Ceroli exhibition, the entire work was created on the occasion of this event. The exhibition consists of XNUMX gigantic sandpaper, a large sculpture and a new engraving made with the Vigna Antoniniana and published by XNUMXRC. The subject on which the work revolves is The Devil.

The catalog “The frontier of the first sheet n. 8 ”With a conversation between Francesco Villari, Duccio Trombadori and Mario Ceroli entitled“ THE NAME OF THE DEVIL ”Visit to Mario Ceroli's studio.

TROMBADORI - It seems to me that the beauty of Mario consists especially in an inexhaustible ability to surprise, be surprised and above all in the great desire to have fun when he puts his hand to work and to shape. This effervescence emanates from the images and outlines that breathe in space and you feel the heartbeat of the form: it is a life that gushes like an inexhaustible fountain. Here there is really the hand of the "devil" in the sense you were talking about a little while ago. The devil frees the vital forces, and so is born that form in the making in which we see the junction of two bodies of flame twisting upwards as they dissociate and almost disperse in the air, hinting at the metamorphosis of matter, wood, fire, air and so on in perpetual motion. In the center is this sculpture animated by twisted strips painted variously in red. It corresponds to images on monochrome backgrounds drawn or painted or engraved on sandpaper: and you see women embracing magnified figures of the male sex, or tracing profiles in the air that open space towards cosmic depths, while the signs suggest new chromatic densities, planes of fantastic biologies and strange lyrical chemisms. They are fantasies that emerge directly from the manipulated and solicited matter to express its internal vitality. It is here that Ceroli begins a formal and at the same time narrative adventure. As if he were writing a diary in public and an intimate annotation, a confession and a self-portrait in the mirror. The negative of the material is imprinted on the sandpaper and thus the demon of existence is measured with the need to find the rest of a form, to visually shape the primary energy. This is what it means to "give shape to the devil", and to what extent this need coincides with Mario's will for art, which constantly pushes him to work, to create the work.