Mario Giacomelli

So far, so close

«What is aura, actually? A singular weave of space and time: the unique appearance of a distance, however close it may be.» – Walter Benjamin

Galleria La Nuvola, in collaboration with Magonza, is pleased to present, on Friday, May 22 at 6:00 PM, the new exhibition project Mario Giacomelli – so far, so close, curated by Alessandro Sarteanesi and Alice Falsaperla, with the patronage of the Mario Giacomelli Archive and the Municipality of Rome Capital. The project fits coherently into the wake of reflections initiated by Magonza with the exhibition Giacomelli / Burri. Photography and material imaginary at MAXXI (2021) and continued with the exhibitions at Palazzo delle Esposizioni (2025) and the National Gallery of Umbria (2025), the latter organized within the Centenary celebrations of the Master. This new investigation shifts its focus from the landscape to other cycles by Giacomelli and addresses the question of the distance of the gaze and the way in which the artist comes to form the image. So far, so close is a historical-artistic initiative that does not refer solely to an optical distance, but tells us something essential about Giacomelli’s imaginative capacity. The artist gives the image an enigmatic, sometimes abstract form, starting from a given reality: a representation that, without resolving its own mystery, reveals, and at the same time imposes, a transformation that turns towards the new. It is a dimension intimately close to the artist, a “Poetic Space”, an interstice investigated in the exhibition starting from a selection of unique works from the Sixties, set up in pairs for the occasion. Here, the natural and the human elements mutually recognize each other in the surfaces marked by time and in the precariousness of their existence. Worn wood, earth, skin, walls, and iron offer themselves as ideal surfaces through which Giacomelli captures and reveals landscapes and faces. From afar, an overall view seems to synthesize the landscape according to geometries and visual partitions, nuclei of meaning capable of canceling even the image itself; up close, the composition leads towards a universal synthesis—where landscapes, figures, and shapes emerge—in which space and emotion coexist. In the exhibition path, one image continues into the next, participating in a single installation where the natural and human data are reflected. Giacomelli, therefore, does not only observe matter and nature but investigates a principle of oscillation between the visible and the intangible, up to grasping its absolute limit, elevating the shot to a “place of unveiling”. The exhibition is part of the cultural program of Galleria La Nuvola, aimed at highlighting the great protagonists of late twentieth-century art, offering the public a unique opportunity to engage with a visual research that continues to question man and time.

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