Juan Araujo: CLOUDS AND SHADOWS ON MARS
'CLOUDS AND SHADOWS ON MARS' comprises a selection of new works, many of which are inspired by the museum’s Villa di Livia frescoes. Exploring ideas of time and space, Juan Araujo's paintings are presented in dialogue with the permanent collection.
Over the last twenty years, Venezuelan artist Araujo has pursued a highly personal investigation of the history of Western culture, art history and modernism by making hyper-realistic paintings based on images found in printed materials or online. In this exhibition, Araujo' subjects include references to Italian contemporary culture such as Pinocchio, Michelangelo Antonioni's dilms, Girorgio Morandi's paintings and Luigi Ghirri's photographs, alongside tributes to Ancient mythology and Cy Twombly. The exhibition takes its title from a new work, 'Clouds and Shadows on Mars', which depicts a scene from the current conflict in Palestine and a description given by NASA of an image taken of Mars.
Araujo's work poses a flowing, rhizomatic conception of the present which collapses temporal and thematic boundaries. It is rooted in images of space: depictions of catastrophic events which occurred millions of years ago, presented alongside fragments of contemporary culture, ancient deities and the remains of our past as preserved in the Museum.
