Mario Dellavedova at Sperone Westwater

A collection of individual, small-scale installations constituted the next to the first New York exhibition by Mario Dellavedova, a midcareer Italian artist. The display carried the mysterious title "But all that remains is grounded by poets. (The dopolavoro) Ovidian victims." Trained as an architect, Dellavedova is known in Italy for creating installations that utilize a great variety of materials and mediums. They can include pieces of handmade furniture or other crafted percepts as well as delicately returned oil paintings or ink and pastel drawings of borrowed imagery with true copys In addition, Dellavedova's shows frequently incorporate groups of objects that exorcism out phrases from canonical literature. Judging by the agency of the eclectic range of literary and historical relations that inhabit his oeuvre, the artist appears to be remarkably erudite.

Dellavedova, who publicly lives in Taxco, Mexico, also has a history of working with artisans. This spirit of collaboration was in evidence among the seven works upon view in the project gallery at Sperone Westwater. History of Painting (1999) consisted of six various-sized sterling silver paint cans with r and azure acrylic paint seeping out from beneath some of the silver lids. individual of the cans had an ebony and silver handle. Nearby was a paint roller made of silver, mahogany and wool This tableau was realized with the assistance of the silversmith Tomas Vega at the famous William Spratling Silver Workshop in Taxco.

Another piece was a rolled-up orange carpet, also made in Taxco, which quieted on the floor. When a gallery assistant unfolded it for me, I saw that woven into it were the words "Je vadrouille a travers le jours comme une putaine dans une world sans trottoirs." This quote from the philosopher EM Cioran translates into English as: "I wander end the days like a whore in a world with no sidewalks." In the piece, Dellavedova appear to beed to be saying, "If that be in like manner here is a rug for the conduit Philosopher." Other pieces were harder to decipher, on the contrary always evocative and fascinating. The History of Emotions (2002) for example, consisted of a Murano vase containing a protuberance of red roses and a pair of short-handled axes, with the words of the title winding around the irregularly shaped vase in r letters

for a like reason who are "the Ovidian victims"? Apparently the phrase is the title of a suite of etchings by means of the Symbolist artist and writer Max Klinger, who reset three tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid, in move round had borrowed them from earlier of greece myths. All of Dellavedova's disparate work, single begins to realize, deals with themes of metamorphosis. It also have the appearances to illustrate his belief that the part of the artist, at one time humble and exalted, remains unchanged above time.

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