Roberto Mondani - Night Encounter

Man of my Time

It is in the darkest shades of anthracite gray that Roberto Mondani's stone dream is taking shape. Myth, antiquity, and stone unfold in the dreamlike dimension of a glorious past: in the delightful meanders of dark rocky gorges, the ancestral Pithecanthropus shapes his first work. It is in those places that matter bends to the power of the intellect, in the heroic sigh of an eternal civilization. A warm, present stone; the fertile Mother Stone from which form springs. In a sort of mystical totem, the genetic heritage of humanity is traced, from the ancient cave of mud, wood, and rain, to the modern prison of glass and concrete. Who was the freest? What remains more tangible than the sculpture that, primitive, echoes a time always the same? Circularity, eternity. Time, similar to a spiral, chases itself in a perpetual motion that annihilates distances. What appears diametrically opposed is, in truth, parallel, and its beginning is its end, like an hourglass that needs no turning over. Define a man. "You are still the man of the stone and the slingshot, the man of my time"... but Roberto Mondani tries to go further, refusing to box himself into the rigidity of his own artifact, to limit himself to the shared conception of monumentality. He makes it fluid, interprets it, distorts it. He gives it the living, plastic consistency of an organism in perpetual evolution, elevating it to tumultuous water with a vibrant glow, whose clear ontological value is impossible to doubt. The Rousseau-like savage re-emerges from his forgotten limbo, a successful parable of living today and yesterday. Deny nature: to what end? The relentless weaving of the Moirai cruelly touches the fate of mankind, condemning them to their inescapable finiteness; But more than existence, ingenuity, which proceeds at a rapid pace through the constant practice of the highest arts, is at work. A strong diatopic component is at work in the choice of materials, pertinent to tradition, rustic and Mediterranean, which convey a strong sense of belonging and connection to the native land. A choice that seems to capture, with greater clarity than a snapshot, the rugged ruggedness of the coasts, the immense allure of the seas, the jagged shorelines standing out against the blue. Thus, looking at his works, one has the impression of witnessing a small glimpse of life, a delicate miniature of everyday life, in which sinuous curves, smoothed by the wind, come to life, like natural elements, under the irresistible impulse of an eternal breath. However, the tenacious echo they evoke is not exhausted in a single form. Instead, it rises skyward, capturing lunar panoramas and evoking scenarios not yet fully explored. In other works, whose originality is expressed through a succession of rounded white lines, a pure feminine semantics is rediscovered, stripped of unnecessary frills and expressed through the most absolute simplification. In an age of surplus, excess, and ostentation, a return to the essential appears to be the most arduous challenge and restores art to its original role. Barely hinted at facial features delicately trace the human and, while placing it in a suspended and impenetrable dimension, seem to define it by highlighting its central core, its most authentic essence. It is precisely in this refined reduction of elements, in this laborious, classicizing work of labor limae, that emotions, sentiments, and the intimate involvement of looking, feeling, and touching emerge. The reality depicted by Mondani is closely connected to materiality and, as such, fits into a multisensory context capable of communicating to and with everyone, transcending the constraints of now-stereotypical verbal language. Even the symbols, then, transform into an uncodified alphabet that allows for primary interpretation only through a sincere appeal to an innocent instinct. The artist's statues forcefully proclaim their ambiguous nature, positioning themselves as a point of connection between the profane and the divine. A magical dimension pervades them, announcing the arrival of a beloved and feared deity. Whether this is a voodoo ritual, with a prehistoric animistic flavor, or a more well-known and controlled religiosity is unknown. What is fundamental, however, is the concept it refers to, in its varied and inexplicable complexity, an explosive force always on the verge of manifesting itself but never completely exhausted. It is in this context, then, that Roberto Mondani has chosen to operate; this is the path he has chosen to take, to bring together a single entity: artist and man, creator and critic, observer and observer, so that the path to follow is one of thought and reflection. So that simplification may be the possible and necessary effort to grasp, delicately, the truth underlying what surrounds us.

Antonella Andriuolo

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