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He’s back
Mario Diacono lights up the storefront at Ars Libri
BY RANDI HOPKINS

When legendary Boston art gallerist Mario Diacono closed his South Street gallery two years ago, we knew this couldn’t be the end. Diacono has been a charming and enigmatic fixture on the international art scene since 1978, when he left a position teaching Italian literature at Sarah Lawrence College to open his first art gallery in Bologna, where he showed young Arte Povera and Conceptual artists like Jannis Kounellis and Vito Acconci. He’s been gracing the Boston art scene since 1985, when he started a gallery on Peterborough Street in the Fenway in what had been the Starn Twins’ studio.

And for all these years, Diacono has done it in his own inimitable style, in out-of-the-way locations and with uniquely inconvenient gallery hours, presenting top-drawer established artists like Alex Katz, Ross Bleckner, and Annette Lemieux as well as introducing new names like Ellen Gallagher, who was a very recent Museum School grad when Diacono gave her a solo show in 1994. What’s more, he’s as passionate about writing as he is about contemporary art. He runs what he calls "a critical gallery," referring not only to his favorite strategy of showing only one or two art works at a time — extremely unusual in the world of commercial art galleries — but also to the trademark dense and extended theoretical essays he writes to accompany each show.

Now Mario is back. And given his love for the written word, it’s fitting that he’s chosen the single, 30-foot wall in the front window of venerated rare-art-book seller Ars Libri’s new premises on Harrison Avenue as his latest venue. Opening this Friday, November 1, is "James Siena: Rule Change," a month-long installation of one 29-by-32-inch work by a New York–based artist who paints hypnotic abstract works on small aluminum panels. There is something magical about Diacono’s transformation of this odd-shaped, light-filled bookshop corner into a viewing space for some of the most interesting contemporary art in Boston. An artist whose studio is nearby walked past Ars Libri’s big grid of windows one recent evening and was surprised to see the space, which hovers just above street level, "lit up like a UFO." Diacono’s spare installation is a friendly alien in the South End, and it’s quickly settled into a lively dialogue with its new environment.

ALSO NOTED. With "Episodes: Bus Park & Forevermore" (on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum until January 5), contemporary artist Nari Ward has created an oasis in a school bus as well as several poetic works that take on the inevitable passage of time and progress of dust, something that museums are usually in the business of defending against. Ward is known for site-specific installations that draw on the community they are created in. And next Thursday, November 7, the Gardner will host a panel discussion "Crossroads: Art, Community and the Work of Nari Ward" with panelists Adam Weinberg, director of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, independent curator Mary Jane Jacob, and Pieranna Cavalchini, curator of contemporary art at the Gardner.

"James Siena: Rule Change" is at Mario Diacono at Ars Libri, 500 Harrison Avenue, November 1 through 30. The opening reception on November 1 from 5 to 8 p.m. is free; call (617) 560-1608. "Crossroads: Art, Community and the work of Nari Ward" is part of the "Eye of the Beholder" lecture series at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 the Fenway. It’s on November 7 at 6:30 p.m.; tickets are $7 general public, $5 seniors and members, free for students. Call (617) 278-5102, or e-mail lectures@isgm.org for ticket information.


Issue Date: October 31 - November 7, 2002
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