Marco Neri | Mars Black



Marco Neri works with a reductive palette and additionally restricts the medium to tempera, in his view a more
introverted and less seductively virtuosic medium than oil. Working in series, he finds inspiration locally (the
landscape of the Romagna, modernist condos along the Adriatic coast) as well as globally (flags of the
world, airport terminals). With the exception of the flag paintings and an early suite of photo-based portraits,
the works are painted from memory, without recourse to preparatory studies or captured imagery. Indeed,
Neri’s art is all but free of any reference to photography, Hollywood, video, animation, advertising and
other standard indicators of contemporaneity.

Of paramount importance to Neri is the mark of the hand, the assertion of painting as a manual expression
of ideas. Absorbed with the history of art, he avoids nostalgia and cynicism, though irony is expressed in the
double entendre of a title or his enjoyment of the ambiguities of form: alternating bands, for example, may
suggest the slats of a wooden shutter, the spines of books, or lines of text cancelled on a printed page. His
recent turn toward greater abstraction has more to do with arriving at the underlying order of things than
with imposing a predetermined system.

The exhibition Mars Black (named for the opaque, iron-oxide-derived pigment) includes individual canvases
and diptychs, executed predominantly in black and white, and distinguished by themes with an urban flavor.
Also present will be examples from “Omissis,” an extended work on paper that comprises 276 elements
organized in compositions of 2 to 6 sheets.





Omissis N. 16, 2005




Lucas Schoormans Gallery is delighted to introduce the highly regarded Italian painter Marco Neri in his
first solo exhibition in the U.S. Born in Forlì in 1968, Neri has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums
throughout Europe since 1987. He holds the chair in painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Ravenna.

March 8—April 15, 2006
Opening reception Wednesday, March 8, 6—8 PM



Città, 2005


























“Marco Neri: Mars Black” is on view at Lucas Schoormans Gallery through April 15, 2006.
For further information, please contact the gallery at 212 243 3159.

The “Omissis” series will be the subject of an exhibition at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
in Prato (Italy), opening April 8, 2006.



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