Mario Airò – Nel mentre

This summer, Karussell presents Nel mentre, an exhibition by Mario Airò curated by Matilde Galletti, conceived specifically for the historic spaces of Palazzo Brancadoro, home to the Circolo di Ave. A center of excellence in the promotion of classical music, the Circolo combines the enhancement of cultural heritage with a music program of international scope. Nel mentre unfolds as an homage to music, structured as a visual and sensory journey that reinterprets the relationships between sound, form, and matter. The artist—long attentive to the sonic dimension and its possible translations into the visual field—offers a poetic interpretation of harmony as a generative principle, through works that evoke musical progressions, rhythms, intervals, and vibrations.

Greeting visitors along the grand staircase is Diapason #3, an installation made up of five brass elements, each two and a half meters tall, reminiscent of tuning forks but altered in scale. Each element contains an absorbent sheet soaked in colored ink, evoking the spectral lines of gold’s light emission—a visual transposition of the electromagnetic frequency emitted by electrons during an energy transition.

At the entrance to the main floor is Estrellita (2003), an installation with a lyrical and poignant character: a rose, planted in peat inside a glass vase, is gently caressed by light descending from above, while the namesake aria by Manuel Ponce resonates in the air. The image that emerges is intensely evocative—a synesthesia between the verticality of the flower and that of the song. In the quiet intimacy of the studiolo, the viewer encounters a machine with a simple mechanism: a rudimentary press crushes an upside-down rose soaked in alcohol onto a sheet of music paper. The rose’s pigment imprints itself on the paper, generating spontaneous and delicate marks. The piece chosen by Airò, Les collines d’Anacapri by Claude Debussy, is the sonic echo of an interior landscape. Throughout the exhibition, new sheets will be printed and scattered throughout the space as migrating traces of a visual score.

At the heart of the exhibition route, the Sala della Musica hosts the installation Pareidolia capillare, composed of six large poplar wood panels. The natural grain, gently emphasized by translucent layers of color, creates a pulsating, vibrant surface that becomes a visual echo of the sounds traditionally inhabiting the room—returning a silent, almost “percussive” rhythm to the skin of the space.

Concluding the exhibition is Anatoma tobeyoides, a rarefied and almost imperceptible work: a white panel on which unfolds a dense network of equally white graphic marks, playing on the boundary between the visible and the invisible. The drawn lattice simulates the erratic paths of a micro-mollusk, transforming the surface of the work into a silent score of minimal and vital movements.

With Nel mentre, Mario Airò delivers an immersive and meditative experience that invites viewers to rediscover the connections between art and music, between light and sound, between listening and seeing. A project that engages intimately and elegantly with the identity of Palazzo Brancadoro and the musical vocation of the Circolo di Ave, reaffirming the evocative power of contemporary art to give form to the immaterial realms of perception.