Twenty-six deposits of major Italian museums are shown to the public for the first time in Mauro Fiorese's shots

Mauro Fiorese.Treasure Rooms (2014-2016) is the exhibition that will run from April 5 to September 22, 2019 at the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art in Verona.

On this occasion, twenty-six vaults of major Italian museums will be presented to the public for the first time through the photographs of Mauro Fiorese, an internationally recognized artist of Verona origin who died prematurely three years ago.

The exhibition, curated by Beatrice Benedetti, artistic director of the Boxart Gallery, and Patrizia Nuzzo, curator in charge of GAM’s Collections of Modern and Contemporary Art, will show twenty-six images, made available by Verona’s Boxart Gallery and taken over the course of three years, from 2014 to 2016, depicting the deposits of major Italian museums, including the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the Museo Correr in Venice, and the MART in Rovereto.

Fiorese’s images recall high painting in their compositional choices, brushstrokes of light, and especially in their printing on cotton paper; shots that present the invisible part of great museums.

An exhibition to make visitors think about the fundamental function of repositories and their potential. Fiorese’s iconographic investigation will be placed in dialogue with original monumental Canovian plaster casts from the deposits of the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art in Verona, significant evidence of the heritage of Verona’s Civic Museums not exhibited in permanent displays.

“The theme of an organic management of collections and related deposits, which need standards adequate to the needs imposed by conservation, research and the ever-increasing demand for public enjoyment, is very much felt among museum institutions, public and private, in Italy as well as abroad. This is evidenced by recurrent initiatives on the subject, including an important conference of ICOM-Italy (International Council of Museums), L’essenziale è invisibile agli occhi. Between care and research, the potential of museum repositories, to be held in Matera next March 15. These are absolutely vital places of knowledge for a museum and essential services for the development of scientific research and technological experimentation at the basis of any initiative for the enhancement of collections. The definition ”museum repository“ no longer really makes sense of the function that these places perform. Even when it does not lead to the creation of visitable repositories or secondary galleries, as there are especially abroad, these are still ”active repositories“ and spaces that need to be made increasingly accessible to the public. The Directorate of the Civic Museums is carefully reflecting on these needs in order to develop a forward-looking curation project capable of reorganizing the conspicuous deposits of our museum system according to these criteria,” said Francesca Rossi, director of the Civic Museums of Verona.

“Mauro Fiorese’s artistic project brings to light, through the photographic lens, the places where masterpieces of Italian art are preserved, revealing their majesty: true deposits of culture among the most conspicuous in the world. The deposits themselves, thus rise to the role of works of art ennobled by large-format portraits. Freed from the ancient and now obsolete prejudice that saw or imagined it only as a dusty, motionless and silent environment, the ”vault“ is instead increasingly the protagonist of the real activity of a gallery and translates its deep soul. The result is an unprecedented series of nontraditional ’landscapes,’ which compose an ideal picture gallery, born in turn from the sum of hidden works,” stressed curator Patrizia Nuzzo.
Co-curator Beatrice Benedetti added, “Mauro Fiorese’s neutral gaze represents the most appropriate tool to reunite the visible with the invisible. The artist’s photographs capture the archives with an approach close to the purism of straight photography, or the direct capture of reality. The viewer is immersed in silent spaces, only the compositional choices of the author make perceptible the emotion of this ”excavation,“ the amazement of access to treasure chests that are almost closed to the public.”

The exhibition is promoted by the Civic Museums of the City of Verona in collaboration with Boxart Gallery.

For info: www.gam.comune.verona.it

Hours: Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Mauro Fiorese, Treasure Rooms of the Uffizi Gallery - Florence, 2014 (2014; 90 x 120 cm, pigment print)

Twenty-six deposits of major Italian museums are shown to the public for the first time in Mauro Fiorese's shots

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