For over 50 years, Mango’s art practice has used the human form to embody the invisible spirit of space and being.
Robert Mango: Future Baroque
In 1971, after attending a small poetry reading in Chicago by William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, the young artist Robert Mango was inspired to read all of their published works. Struck by their direct honesty and the writers’ collective power to manifest the unseen, Mango sought to conjure in his painting the same poetic surrealism and ecstasy. For over 50 years, Mango’s art practice has used the human form to embody the invisible spirit of space and being. His earlier paintings depict heroic gods and giants that stride across cityscapes or arise out of inky waters. With time, the two dimensions of the canvas was not enough space to contain Mango’s all-encompassing vision and he began to sculpt forms and deconstruct the pictorial environment to create a new kind of figure that joyously frolics within embracing abstract spaces. These buoyant female figures wrestle energy from the landscape and embody the spirit and exuberance of nature.
The depiction of nature as a woman is the oldest visual art theme since the beginning of time. From the Venus of Willendorf to Picasso’s Dora Maar, the veneration of the female form is a universal, cultural archetype.. The shaped sculptural paintings of Robert Mango follow this long tradition. Mango’s women not only embody the spirit of the universe but their shift from painted figure to sculpted form, like the Rococo nudes of François Boucher, has a buoyancy that breathes life into their surroundings with gentle laughter and graceful movement. As John Mendelsohn observes about Mango’s paintings: “These works persist.. as painterly evocations of the psyche imagining itself before our eyes.”
Robert Mango paints in luminous, celebratory colors with hand-crafted metallic accents, enabling his muses to glow and shine. He references the history of art in his kaleidoscopic melding of genres – abstraction, realism, symbolism, and surrealism. Installed together, these freewheeling paintings describe a new era of the Baroque with deconstructed mathematics combined with visibly shifting forms that give way to a colorful ecstasy of vibrant pigments and powerful poetics.
"In his freewheeling melding of genres - abstraction, realism, symbolism, and surrealism, Mango renews and renders the figure in emotion, light, color, and above all, passion."
Robert Mango is a highly inventive painter whose surreal vision of the human form deconstructs, then reconstructs the body in space. The artist’s resulting narratives, which are exceedingly non-linear, pose far more questions than answers. The enticement is the mystery, the puzzle pieces he presents that defy any apparent rhyme or reason, and even time and place, as the world becomes one fleeting passage through a collective consciousness that is never at rest. It’s automatic yet controlled – chaotic yet coincidental – and always captivating.
In Guillame Leblanc’s short film about the work of Robert Mango “Amiss in the Abyss”, the artist describes his work as bridging both the classical art historical tradition as well as the contemporary vitality of America’s art scene. Based in New York City, Mango is well-perched to look in all directions as the artist presents the human spirit as a creative commentator pulling from the past, present and projecting into the future. There are no boundaries here, only the limitations of one’s imagination to conceive and present a mental state that relies as heavily on the unconscious as it does on the here and now. In his freewheeling melding of genres - abstraction, realism, symbolism, and surrealism, Mango renews and renders the figure in emotion, light, color, and above all, passion.
Mango’s solo exhibitions include the Duane Street Gallery, Dillon Gallery, Elga Wimmer Projects and Neo Persona Gallery (New York City, NY), Galerie L’Orangeraie,(St. Paul De Vence, France), Radost Gallery,(Prague, Czech Republic), Macnider Museum (Mason City, IA), Utica College (Utica, NY), Mary G. Hardin Center for the Arts (Gadsden, AL), Spiva Art Center (Jopin, MO), N.A.M.E. Gallery, Walter Kelly Gallery,, Merchants and Manufacturers Club of America, School of the Institute and Art Expo Navy Pier (Chicago, IL), Thornton Community College, (South Holland, IL), Gallery Chastain,(Taos, NM) and the Krannert Art Museum University of Illinois, (Urbana, IL) and many others. Robert Mango's next solo exhibition will be at the Spiva Art Center, St. Louis, MS.
In 2021, Robert Mango was the artist honoree of the Denali Foundation. The artist honoree is chosen for their work inspired by adventure of the body, mind and spirit, the artists work embodies a powerful connection to Mother Earth, and human spirit and imagination.
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ROB MANGO | Eterno Ritorno
Castello 925 | 15 Settembre - 26 Novembre, 2023 September 16 - November 26, 2023 Castello Spaces | Castello 925Rob Mango paints in luminous, celebratory colors with hand-crafted metallic accents, enabling his muses to glow and shine. He references the history of art in his kaleidoscopic melding of genres...Read more -
ROBERT MANGO : Civilization, Surrealism, & Humanity
SPIVA CENTER FOR THE ARTS July 29 - October 29, 2022SPIVA CENTER FOR THE ARTS Main Gallery 222 West 3rd Street Joplin, Missouri 64801 (417) 623-0183 July 30 – October 29, 2022 Opening reception: Friday, July 29, 2022 | 5:30-7:30pm...Read more
