Sauro Cardinali's Self-Referential Art at Blocco 13 in Rome

Sauro Cardinali, an Umbrian artist born in Spina in 1951, presents a demanding exhibition at Blocco 13 in Rome, a gallery he co-founded. The show compels viewers to engage deeply with the works, which undergo a process of deconstruction and regeneration. Cardinali reduces his own paintings, photographs, prints, and traces of self-portraits and landscapes into intertwined paper ribbons, solidifying them with a fixative. The resulting images are mounted on large sheets of paper, meticulously squared and reworked on the reverse side. These monumental sheets illuminate the gallery courtyard, accompanied by small pots of plants both upright and upside down, suggesting a dual dimension of life and nature. Cardinali, likening himself to an 'ornamental hermit' from 18th-century aristocratic estates, examines his own production with disenchantment, irony, and melancholy. He disassembles and reassembles his work, observing it with a smile, as both artist and oeuvre seem lost in the world yet fight together. The exhibition invites viewers to enjoy this anachronistic and beautiful contest.