cover design concept: Susanna Ronner Design
ROB MANGO Eterno Ritorno
ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE CASTELLO
Castello 925 Gallery
Fondamenta San Giuseppe
Sestiere Castello, 925
30122 Venice, IT
16 September - 26 November, 2023
On the occasion of the 2023 Architecture Venice Biennale CURATED BYORSEOLABAROZZIBeyond the artist’s heroic journey, art itself is the mystery that is celebrated in Robert Mango’s work. We see this reverence in his summoning the history of art, in images of classical sculpture and many other works, and in his freewheeling melding of genres - abstraction, realism, symbolism, and surrealism. Like the artist, the paintings are mutable and enigmatic, best apprehended as they were made - directly and intuitively. And it is as art these works persist, free of interpretation, as painterly evocations of the psyche imagining itself before our eyes.
- John MendelsohnSELF PORTRAIT WITH HERCULES
In “Self-Portrait with Hercules” I decorated the fearless hero in a Victorian gown with Hindu headdress. I was invoking Hindu avatars side by side with Western ensembles. I did not consciously understand why I was beckoning Krishna and Victorian dress simultaneously to adorn the figure onstage. The urge to do so was strong, and I felt it must be accomplished; I was channeling them as a child might fantasize a mystical being. In all the paintings in this group. The hero is the artist underneath the costuming. He wields a paintbrush or a musical instrument, an innocent implement with which to encounter the unknown. We find the hero in a cave, arising from a mountain lake or floating above an airy landscape or atop the city. I was being carefree with symbolic meanings and surreal feelings here, not unlike Federico Fellini, who once said, “All art is autobiographical.
- Rob Mango, 2014“100 Paintings: an Artist’s Life in New York City”
Courtesy No Room for Doubt inc.
48” x 84” in | 122 x 213.5 cm
Rob Mango
Self Portrait with Hercules, 1994 oil on canvas
Journey to Redfish Lake
“I was training at high pain thresholds with some of the best distance runners in the world. My specialty was much shorter, the 880 yard run (800m). Training with these men who specialized in longer distances was my coach’s way of making me stronger and increasing my endurance. We would train with very hard 6-12 mile runs between a 5:00 and 6:50 minute per mile pace. There would always be a kick or sprint at the endeven practice was a race. I was training with Olympians, national and world record holders. They were fierce competitors. If I could hang in during the run — while my fellow runners tried to leave me — I could outsprint them at the end. During the middle of these training runs when my mates were ratcheting up the pace, I would fall into oxygen debt - the pain was excruciating. To survive the experience, I would visualize paintings, usually works in progress, but also new pictorial hallucinations as my mind would fill with fragments from my subconscious. On any given day over the last thirty years I would have a dozen or so drawings, oil sketches canvases and assemblages in progress in my studio. Before heading out the door for a run I would carefully look over each piece of unfinished art - images that would reappear on a screen in my mind during the run. The combination of excess followed by inadequate O2 supply within an hour of running became a powerful period of creation and visualization as many images and solutions to painting challenges would pour into my mind. After the run, rather than my going immediately to work I would make fast thumbnail sketches and notes of what I have visualized. This was when I conceived “Journey to Redfish Lake”.
- Rob Mango in an interview with John Mendelsohn
Rob Mango
Journey to Red Fish Lake II, 2015 oil on canvas
46” x 56” in | 117 x 142.25 cm
I am writing this from memory… Of when I painted the picture in 1993. The left panel of the diptych, a canvas, expresses in pure paint the emotion of the action depicted on the right, a polished metal panel. I have always been seduced by the look and feel of oil on metal. Not unlike industry where oil on metal is inherent. The expressive paint handling on the left was applied in an unconscious manner, at times with my eyes closed. When I rested from the abstraction, I observed in it a breaking out of geometry taking place (possibly representing fracturing the bonds of logic and social order), a movement and flow upward, then down. Like water and oil paint itself, creativity is a release, a combustion outward.
The warrior’s gesture, discarding his sword - transforming into a paint brush - exhibiting his exhaustion with heroism via armed conflict.
As an artist, I have no illusion that creativity is devoid of aggression. Breaking from the beautiful and glorious artistic methods and subjects of classicism is, in itself, an aggressive act. Upon reflection, I find myself animated by an urgent American imagination that wants neither classicism nor illustration yet is simultaneously dependent on and indebted to European classical painting techniques learned, I embraced as young man. These polarities both haunt and animate me as a painter today.
- Rob Mango8.16.2023
Rob Mango Sword in the Water, 1993 oil on canvas & brushed aluminum 33in. x 50 in | 84 x 127 cm
If you are an artist you often visualize your creativity itself, your special skills or “superpowers”. This would explain the appearance of harlequins, shamans, samurai warriors, card sharps, and other trickster figures, floating outside the paintings, then stepping into the arena. These avatars are instrumental as the cast of characters in Mango’s epic struggle in New York. Mango took particular pleasure in painting shamans and samurai, and for that reason this exhibition traces his engagement with them in some detail. Mango becomes the samurai, with a power by intensity of gaze alone to make the streets of the city over into rivers. The same avatar power to rise up is seen in Journey to Redfish Lake (1994) and in Self-Portrait with Hercules (1994). Mango, however, was always more interested in the heaven of success than in the hell of failure. He therefore went right on to the apotheosis, though often poised precariously over visions of the apocalypse, and these are his panoramic pantheons of the city, visions had from airplanes passing over it, or from running, taking in the whole of it to make a fantastical, playful, toying manifesto of the city as the place to make it most of all.
- Robert MahoneyRHAPSODY: The Urban Fantasy Paintings of Rob Mango
Warrior
1993 oil on canvas & brushed aluminum 33in. x 50 in | 84 x 127 cm
Rob Mango
Muse,
“I was seated on the last barstool next to the open door in Cipriani’s Bar, awaiting Helen, who was in our pensione, making final adjustments to her evening costume. With few cares, and fully under the spell of the Adriatic’s shimmering jewel, I blissfully sipped the evening’s first Campari and soda. Suddenly, a man wearing a black mask cavorted precariously and gleefully into plain view through the open portal, snaring my startled gaze. I perceived this jester’s mirthful abandon and improbable dance as a kaleidoscopic blur. For a frozen moment, as in a Muybridge photo, he stared directly into my eyes and emitted a slight smile, as if he knew me. Leaving more than enough lira on the bar, I slipped off my stool and followed him. His expression conveyed that his performance was intended for me alone. Still confounded, and lacking a witness, I cannot be certain of the events of that night. They resemble a dream, and yet I am haunted by vestiges and bits of memory too clear to dismiss, too unreal to accept. Was the experience real? Was it something that took place outside or within my own mind? Hoping to reconcile the events of that evening, I began sketches soon after returning to New York. I decided to reconstruct the feelings and events as best I could in a painting. So, using my keenest recollection, I set out with fervor to paint the jester’s appearance. The only thing of which I was certain was the costume itself. I also hoped to sort out the preoccupations of the unconscious mind from reality. This time, with a paintbrush in hand, I again followed the jester. I spent a good deal of time conceiving and tossing around a variety of compositions.
Rob Mango, 2014 “100 Paintings, an Artist Life in New York City” courtesy, No Room for Doubt inc.Avatar Incarnate, 2023 oil on canvas
43 x 72 in | 109 x 183 cm
Rob Mango
While in Zurich in 2016, I spent several days with the dancers pictured in “Aura VI” at the behest a most remarkable woman of the arts, a prima ballerina, now a renown patron of the ballet: Monika Mathier. I sketched the brothers while they practiced their choreography, and later witnessed their performance at Taunhall Zurich. From these exposures,, 16 black and white sketches evolved into a single canvas, “Aura VI”. The darkened coliseum background gives one an immediate sense of Europe, but the evocative element of color, the ribbon of love which loosely bonds the two, evolving from cool blues and greens into warmth - orange, red and yellow - before transiting back upward returns to the universe from which it originates.
- Rob Mango- 2023 NYC. Rob Mango Aura VI, 2017 oil on canvas 50 x 40 in | 101.5 x 127 cmAura VI
Violet Sea
The pose for Violet Sea is based on a moment’s observation, a mental snapshot took place of a female figure at ease. A day later in the studio, a drawing on paper emerged. A pose can be compelling to me when it borders on asymmetric imbalance but not quite. As I plotted the integral pieces, and began to sculpt the figure, endowing an inner peace became my goal. Thus I sculpt the resting head twice. The second attempt required closed eyelids and blissful smile. I wanted to exempt her from all distractions and obligations imposed by the surrounding world. I sought a mood of peaceful dream floating in a sea of Violet wave-like forms. My initial impression, her hair closely matched the color of oxidized bronze. This entire sculptural-painting from sketch to bronze hair was executed in my New York studio.
Rob Mango
Violet Sea, 2019 oil on canvas over sculpted foam, copper, polished bronze, oak frame 64” x 46” in | 162.5 x 117 cm
- Rob Mango - 2023
Fauves
The Fauves were French artists of the early 20th century whose works are characterized chiefly by the use of vivid colors in immediate juxtaposition and contours usually in marked contrast to the color of the area defined. Artistically speaking, they were thought of as wild beasts … My picture, “Fauves” is painted and sculpted wild forest dwelling entities in primeval color, clinging to one another for survival and satiation of desire. I envisioned him as a tree like protective form and she as clinging vine. A picture evolves in my minds-eye, rotating through many faculties and senses. Not unlike a recipe for food, the color requires natural vitality and texture, the mood comes from a deep pool of romantic pathos within.
Rob Mango Fauves, 2012 oil on canvas over sculpted foam, copper, polished bronze, oak frame
60” x 43” x 5” in | 152.5 x 109 x 12.7 cm
- Rob Mango 2023, NYC.
Pain and desire invert posture momentarily, it began.
Under the weighty demand of hope, they paused.
Loves laser light illumination, ended.
Their negative double exposure reappeared before their existence in, the past.
La
,
oil, sculpted foam, mixed media, wood frame 65” x 54” x 5” in | 165 x 137 x 12.7 cm
Rob Mango, 2023 Rob Mango Faire Amore 2023 La Faire Amore
Three Bells
Just outside the back of his calloused mind compressed onto a shiny metal orb, a conjured notion avoids, untethered. Touch and felt impression hesitantly ignored.
Retinal cognition will assure its design yet a plurality of faculty fails to absorb, it’s weight, “not seen”, radius “lacks measure”. The tally of gods denounces, yet a single eye implored.
With adjacent hemisphere’s approval maligned and memory in denial, objectivity was poised to abhor, a visceral slab of bone, powerfully descends in leather. Its Celsius pulse, not in accord…
Under and behind fallen tears, streams combine They splash and puddle, as losses scored, He being diminished, himself the transgressor. With thought and perception divergent, his future unmoored.
oil, sculpted foam, mixed media, wood frame 50” x 37” x 8” in | 127x 94 x 20.5cm
- Rob Mango, 2023 Rob Mango Three Bells, 2023
Standing Male Nude
“A few weeks passed and a run of sales began on the male nudes I had painted for the show. The eight framed nudes of oil and mixed media on heavy rag paper all sold. Ozzie had become adept at selling them; he was feeding many of them to the gay community in New York, Canada and Europe. When they were gone, Ozzie freaked out, panicked, and told Valerie he needed more “paintings of Mango”—more male nudes. Valerie, a facile minx, had a personality trait of transforming her mood on a dime, from lioness to pussycat, as required by the situation or company at hand. By virtue of her contract with me, she also retained the legal right to roar if she chose to. This time, though, she purred, asking me to make as many male nudes as I could produce. Over the next year and a half, I produced thirty-two more male nudes in addition to the eight already sold. The men pictured were proportioned evocatively as athletes or workmen, wearing nothing but a jester’s cap and wielding a paintbrush as if it were a tool or sport implement. Pictured in postures of rigorous work, dance or athleticism and immersed in abstract surroundings, they all sold. They were selling so quickly that many were not photographed before being framed—often they were not even dry, but shipped off ASAP.
Rob Mango, 2014 “100 Paintings, an Artist Life in New York City” courtesy, No Room for Doubt inc.50” x 42” in | 127 x 107 cm
Rob Mango
Standing Male Nude, 1996 pastel and oil on canvas
“For the artist Rob Mango, the city is a dream theater, the setting for an epic drama played out across space and time. The city, whether New Delhi or New York, with its familiar landmarks, but a fantastic Gotham populated by fierce and beautiful figures, imposing enough to rival the towers around them. These personages, from many epochs and cultures, seem to have emerged from an elevated realm where gods, warriors and a panoply of mythic characters coexist.”
“Epic
- John MendelsohnImaginings Summoned From the Psyche”
‘High Lights’ October 2022, Vol 1 Issue 17
Rob MangoKrishna Passing the Wheel of Fortune, 1993 oil and mixed media on canvas
46” x 34” in | 116 x 86.25 cm
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Castello 925, Venice, Italy
2020 Spiva Art Center, Joplin, MO
2019 Mary G. Harden Center for the Arts, Gadsden, AL
2019 Barrett/Utica College, NY
2019 Macnider Museum, Mason City, IA
2018-2019 Chase Contemporary, New York, N.Y.
2014 Elga Wimmer Pcc Gallery, New York N.Y.
2000-2013 Duane Street Gallery, New York N.Y.
1998 Galerie L'ORANGERAIE, St.Paul De Vence, France
1997 RADOST Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
1995 Dillon Gallery, New York N.Y.
1990 Neo Persona Gallery, New York N.Y.
1987 Neo Persona Gallery, New York N.Y.
1986 Neo Persona Gallery, New York N.Y.
1985 Neo Persona Gallery, New York N.Y.
1980-1990 Art Expo Navy Pier, Chicago IL
1979 Merchants and Manufacturers Club of America, Chicago IL
1977 Thorton Community College South Holland, IL
1976 N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago IL
1975 Levis Faculty left, University of Illinois Urbana
1973 Gallery Chastain Taos, New Mexico
1972 Krannert Art Museum University of Illinois Urbana
1967 School of the Art Institute, Chicago IL
EDUCATION
1965-1969 The School of The Art Institute Chicago, Il
1970-1973 University of Illinois, B.F.A.Painting
1973-1974 University of New Mexico, Painting
1974-1976 University of Illinois MFA Sculpture
Many thanks to:
Luca Caldironi, Director, Castello 925
Orseola Barozzi, Curator, Castello 925
Eleanora Caucino, Gallery Manager, Castello 925
