PAST SHOWS: MARIO ROSSI

20 September–16 November 2008

Mario Rossi’s new exhibition of paintings evoke the contemporary sublime, celebrating the awe and majesty of the ocean, and the spirit of exploration. He taps into our primal fears to remind us that we are but flotsam to be tossed, or lost at sea, despite our best endeavours. Undaunted by the enormity of capturing the expressions of flow and undertow on canvas, his brushwork emulates a lattice of confluent rips and underlying currents, which seduce and mesmerize. Against this backcloth are woven narratives out of which the sea emerges not only as a site of struggle and conflict but of hope and expectation.

Mario Rossi is Senior Lecturer in Painting at Central St. Martins. He lives and paints from his studio in Hastings.

‘Rossi comes to the sea as a 21st century painter. He is aware of its symbolic potency. He knows how it is never the same from one second to the next, and how it opens up endless possibilities for visual interpretation’. ‘There is no denying that much of his work represents a tour de force’.
Michael Glover, The Independent 2008

Historically the sea has always been a subject that painters have been drawn to, as it lends itself readily to painterly concerns, partly due to it’s physical properties, reflection, space, movement and then there are its cultural and historical associations with the tradition of the Romantic Sublime - all of which have become representational clichésin our image saturated environment. I am interested in all of this but want to squeeze some more significance out of the cliché.

What are your plans for the future?
To continue fishing in the full knowledge that there are no fish out there.
Mario Rossi, 2008