Mauro Fiorese (1970 – 2016)
OBITUARY
Anybody who ever walked through the streets of Verona with Mauro Fiorese quickly understood how much he as an artist meant to the people in his hometown. He stopped time and again to shake a hand here, exchange a couple of words there. His portrait hangs in one of the best restaurants in the city, and the waiter says: “Yes, that is Mauro, our photographer”.
We had the privilege of showing a selection of Mauro’s works over the past several years, starting with the exhibition “Mind Map of Love” in the Casa di Giulietta in Verona and then also in Singapore, Munich and San Cassiano. While working with him, we not only got to know a great photographic artist, but also a wonderful human being full of creative energy and a contagious love of life.
Mauro Fiorese knew the art world well, but in that world he was one of those rare persons who was able to retain an almost child-like passion for their work. The combination of his professionalism and pure joy in photography made him unique.
On Sunday, 4 December 2016, Mauro Fiorese passed away in Verona after a prolonged illness. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We miss him very much.
ABOUT MAURO FIORESE
Mauro Fiorese was an artist and educator for more than twenty-five years, teaching Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti and the University in Verona, at I.E.D. European Institute of Design in Milan, and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study abroad program in Italy.
The red thread going through Mauro Fioreses work is imperfection. From the time he started his career as a photographer after suffering a debilitating break of his ankle and leg that put a halt to his career as a professional American football player, the subject of imperfection was a recurring theme.
Fiorese’s first series CORPOLIBERO (“free body”), a photographic inquiry on the world of handicap, won the “TOP 100 World Photographers List” by the Ernst Haas/Golden Light Award in 1997. After this, the artist moved to New York to study marketing. There, he started a new body of work that took 12 years to complete—the Unidentified Photographic Subject project (U.Pho.S). For this, Fiorese delved into different mediums including film-making, installation work and scriptwriting. U.Pho.S. won several awards and was included in the book “From the Photographic Art to the Art of Photography”, published by Alinari 24 Ore and exhibited in 2014 at the 3rd Düsseldorf Quadriennale.
In 1998 Fiorese returned to Italy where he began teaching at University of Verona and the Institute for European Design in Milan. Fiorese also lectured at the International Center of Photography in New York and the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Soon after his return to Verona, he was asked by the International Center of Photography, the Scavi Scaligeri, to curate a number of exhibitions on Masters of Contemporary Photography including works of Duane Michals, Maggie Taylor and Michael Kenna.
In 2011, his photographs were shown at the 54th Venice Biennale and have been auctioned by Sotherby’s and other important auction houses. In 2012, he exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester (New York), the first and most important American museum devoted to photography and cinema.
In the last years, Fiorese had been working on a series entitled “Treasure Rooms” in which he photographs the storage rooms of the world’s greatest museums, such as the Uffizi in Florence, Galleria Borghese in Rome and Pompei. Fiorese brings to light works from these collections and how they are stored when they are not on display. In so doing, the viewer is given the chance to see works themselves as a treasure – works that otherwise could not be appreciated and enjoyed. With Treasure Room, in collaboration with his gallery Boxart, Mauro Fiorese won the 2015 CODICE MIA Award.
Today, Fioreses works can be found in private and public collections in Europe and United States, such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in Milan, Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri inVerona, Italy
In July 2014, Mauro was diagnosed with lung cancer. He recorded his voyage through this experience on his visual diary Libraincancer (http://www.libraincancer.it/).
