Shadow of Doubt
SEBASTIANO MAURI

Two eyes, a nose and a mouth painted on four square canvasses are the starting point of Shadow of doubt, the multimedia installation that Sebastiano Mauri presents at OTTO ZOO, from May 22nd to June 28 2014.

The four essential portraits are a base onto which Mauri projects four videos of four series of different faces, this time with all the features that distinguish a human being. The result is a blending of faces of different sex, colour, style, race, etc. Fading one into the other, the portraits become an unicum, a hybrid that unites them all: they are extrapolated from their usual context and integrated in a single dimension.

The images are accompanied by a soundtrack, also created through the overlapping of two audio tracks: the OM mantra and a track of hundreds of famous pop song clips using only the vocals. An overlapping by subtraction: both in the music and in the fading faces.

Opulent in references and quotes, Shadow of doubt is an elaborate installation which involves painting, video and sound and is put together with a theatrical pattern: the point is to create a unique portrait of many individuals. The idea of diversity, of someone different from ourselves, is a recurrent subject in Mauri’s work.

Sebastiano Mauri (Milan, 1972) lives and works between Milan and Buenos Aires. He has studied Fine Arts at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London and the Art Students League in New York. He has graduated from New York University with a BA in film and TV. His works have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, including Prague Quadriennal, Istanbul Biennial, Les Rencontres d’Arles, X Bienal de la Habana, MACRO – Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Rosario, MACRO, Rome, Spazio Oberdan and Triennale in Milan, Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo, Buenos Aires, OTTO ZOO, Milan, and Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice.

In 2012 he published his firt novel (Goditi il problema, Rizzoli).

→ artist’s page