Riccardo Mayr

Italian Contemporary Art by Riccardo Mayr - Delizia di Belriguardo

2025

Riccardo Mayr is an Italian self-taught painter born in 1970 who lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. From the very beginning during the nineties, he focused his attention on unusual materials as: iron oxides, rust, charcoal, ash, lead, chalk, sulfur, and mirror debris. The subjects of his paintings while remaining in the domain of classical painting as landscapes and portraits are primarily searching for reasons behind the pure act of painting and art performance, which has, in view of new technologies and their frequent use, become questionable. Capturing the essence of Time, Through Time, in Time, and Across Time. Riccardo Mayr's art involves a painting process that explores and integrates the realms of subjectivism with tangible aspects of reality and their physical behaviors. The goal is to achieve a visual balance between personal memory and the collective memory of the world within the all-encompassing framework of physical laws. This is accomplished by alchemically incorporating four influences onto the canvas: • Emotional influence: The emotional reaction of the artist throughout his personal life experiences, along with the related memories and associated feelings, ultimately shape the overall artist’s perception of the world through the painting process, affecting how it is depicted on the canvas. • Gravitational influence: In the painting process, gravity is acknowledged as a fundamental force. The role of gravity seeks to replicate its function in nature on the painting surface, allowing matter and particles to descend freely onto the canvas, unimpeded and merging on the painting surface in accordance with the laws of physics. • Retro-causal influence: The foundation of the artwork, which acts as the catalyst for the images, consists of authentic collaged documents from the past. A simultaneous evolution of the image occurs both forward and backward through the painting process, as the artist interacts with the aged surface of the collaged documents. • Entangled influence: An image emerges on the surface, characterized by two distinct and independent partially causal directions that advance both forward and backward. This indicates a painting model where all moments in time—past, present, and future—coexist within the artwork. The artist's memory, along with the collective memory of the world, shapes the image on the canvas in alignment with the laws of physics, encapsulating the essence of Time, Through Time, in Time, and Across Time, thereby painting the memory of Time.