Mario Airò

Mario Airò’s Cosmometrie (Cosmometries) are symbolic and geometric schemes designed to be projected onto the ground, taken from the work Articuli 160 adversus mathematicos by Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). A direct predecessor of this work is Springandela, which Airò presented in 2000 at the Young Italian Art Prize of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Rome (now MAXXI) and in which some drawings of the same treatise by Giordano Bruno were already used. What interests the artist is the speculative and not just mathematical approach that characterised the theologian’s geometric investigations.  

In his works, Airò often refers to the literary and philosophical tradition, as was already the case with Welcome to my Monastery (1997), in which, starting from Ernest Hemingway’s novel Islands in the Stream, he reflected on the work of Pontormo, Ezra Pound, El Greco and Hölderlin. As in many of his works (Notti e nebbie, 1998, or La nebulosa di Orione, 2002), the projectors and other instruments used are not concealed but exposed in their own right: the coexistence of technology and references to historical sources evokes an atmosphere that is both evocative and ambiguous. Making his debut in the art scene in the 1990s, Mario Airò (Pavia 1961) was one of the founders of the magazine Tiracorrendo and of the exhibition space in via Lazzaro Palazzi in Milan. He participated in exhibitions such as the Quadriennale in Rome and the Venice Biennale (in 1996 and 1997) and in 2001 the GAM in Turin dedicated a solo exhibition to him. 

Some of his works belong to important public collections such as the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, the Castello di Rivoli and GAM itself.  

Mario Airò participated in the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea in 2004 and in the following year in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow. His numerous exhibitions in Italy and internationally include: Kunsthalle Lophem, Belgium (2000); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (2001); Palazzo della Triennale, Milan (2004); Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa (2013); Galleria Nazionale di Parma - Palazzo della Pilotta, Parma (2015); Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso in Teramo (2020).  

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata