Mario Schifano, Il Viaggiatore Notturno (The Night Traveler)

Opening: saturday, december 16, from 4 pm to 8 pm
Venue: EDDart | Palazzo Taverna, Via di Monte Giordano 36, 00186 | Roma
Open to the public: from december 16 to January 31
Opening hour: from tuesday to saturday, from 2:30 pm to 6:30 p.m.

EDDart is proud to announce, one year after the successful Mario Schifano, Per Terra, carpets and works, a new exhibition dedicated entirely to the “television screens” made in the 1970s.

Among Mario Schifano’s many projects, there was also a film, based on a story by Michelangelo Antonioni, titled precisely: “The Night Traveler.” The film was never realized, but it marked a turning point, a transition, through cinema. From pure painting to emulsified canvases and photography. It was the late 1960s, and painting seemed to have reached a dead end. At this point Schifano had a new tool, the camera, and especially the television, many televisions, which remained turned on in the dark, sending images uninterruptedly. A continuous stream, like shots: news, nudes, programs theme songs, landscapes, wars, faces.

Schifano is comfortable with the speed that the “emulsified canvas” allows, covered, in many cases, with perspex of different tones to create an additional screen. On display in EDDart’s Roman spaces, a selection of “TV Landscapes” allow us to enter the artist’s imagination, and his ability to fix the uninterrupted flow of images from the outside world on canvas. Schifano is comfortable with the speed that the “emulsified canvas” allows, covered, in many cases, with perspex of different tones to create an additional screen. On display in EDDart’s Roman spaces, a selection of “TV Landscapes” that allow us to enter the artist’s imagination, and his ability to fix the uninterrupted flow of images from the outside world on canvas. Almost anemic landscapes, with a few elements outlining sky and earth, as well as more defined landscapes, resembling a postcard, but also portraits, such as the one of Nancy Ruspoli for example, who is been the artist’s girlfriend for a few years. He also paid homage to her in the central work of the exhibition. Then, the iconic palm tree, multiplied in overlapping screens, a frame from an accident, a small nude. A selection that illuminates a precise phase of Mario Schifano’s career, particularly capable of revealing his astonishing topicality.