Mario Airò was born in Pavia in 1961 and completed his studies in Milan. Here, together with other artists, he gave life to an independent, self-organised community centre on Via Lazzaro Palazzo in the first half of the 1990s. The heart of his artistic exploration is the space, which is transformed into atmosphere, often relying on music and references to cinema.
He participated in the 47th Venice Art Biennale (1997), in the 1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and in the Gwangju Biennale (2005). He held solo and group exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, including solo shows at the GAM in Turin (2001) and at the Kunsthalle in Lophem (2000), respectively. His oeuvre was displayed at several group exhibitions housed in prestigious venues, including the Castello di Rivoli, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and the S.M.A.K. in Ghent.
– title: Welcome to my monasterio
– date: 1997
– medium: audio installation
– size: environment
– description: Welcome to my monasterio was presented in 1997 on the occasion of Mario Airò’s solo exhibition at Casa Masaccio, which offered the artist an opportunity to express a synthesis of his signature style based on the polysemous nature of images; a concept that Airò explored to maximum levels. The installation prompted a narrative by images created along the exhibition path – a snapshot of the exhibit is displayed here – drawing inspiration from Ernest Hemingway’s posthumously published novel Islands in the Stream. In this case, the ‘islands’ were Pontormo, Ezra Pound, El Greco, Hölderlin: men, artists, scholars whose lives perfectly embody this sensation of “living in the stream” thanks to their unique way of facing the practice of art and daily experiences. In his works, Airò has always shown great interest for ‘self-seclusion’, since he construes isolation as a creative opportunity; a choice shared by the aforementioned four personalities. Through its refrain Welcome to my monasterio, the audio installation exhorted visitors to drop in the various cells, to step into a different dimension in which feelings and senses become instruments of knowledge of the world.
