Memoir of a Needle

Palo Gallery (New York) is pleased to present Memoir of a Needle, an exhibition of new textile works by Italian artist, Roberto Maria Lino. Featuring 14 new artworks and an installation, this exhibition marks a pivotal moment in Lino’s career as his debut exhibition in the United States. This group of artworks includes pieces from three different series: Sutura, Spolia, and Red Monochromes, the latter two which are being presented for the first time. The exhibition title captures the deeply autobiographical and intimate nature of Lino’s practice– one that unfolds along the threads of his own lived experience. Focusing on the human body and its fraught entanglements with medicine and industry, Lino weaves multimedia textiles on canvas that probe themes of memory, tradition, and trauma. From the age of four, he accompanied his father, a heart surgeon in Naples, into the operating theater, where he routinely witnessed open-heart surgeries. This extraordinary exposure forged a unique relationship to the body’s fragility and the surgical interventions that sustain it, inciting themes that permeate these warm, visceral new bodies of work. The term “sutura,” Latin for suture, refers both to the medical act of stitching wounds and the traditional feminine craft of sewing. The stitched webs in each Sutura resemble the surgical scars left on flesh, but also on the psyche, symbolizing the personal and societal wounds inflicted by systems that can be as healing as they are harmful. It is a dual reference that encapsulates Lino’s poetics: reconciling the inner dimensions of the feminine and masculine through a meditative, repetitive gesture. The way materials are stitched and layered mirrors the delicate, precise, and lifesaving nature of heart surgeries. The overlapping and stitching together of fabrics suggest a process of repair and recovery, but also hint at a piecemeal approach to healthcare, where the system's gaps and overlaps leave visible traces, both on those it serves and on the world from which it draws its resources. The red threads act as a visual metaphor for life's blood, a universal symbol for passion, pain, and the essential connections that bind humanity. In one site-specific work, scraps of his father’s surgical gowns and personal garments of the artist himself are sewn together using thread that belonged to his mother, binding generational memory and parental legacy into a single tactile composition. The result is a kind of vertical emotional map, where fine red threads bleed through layers of textile like capillaries. Seductive drips of red and raised stitch lines echo both painterly abstraction and anatomical forms, imbuing the work with extraordinary psychological force. Using the same needle between each body of work, Lino’s Spolia series are instead made from exclusively white fabrics of ancient trousseaus and personal garments. The Latin term ‘spolia’ refers to repurposed materials, often taken from past artifacts and given new life. The artist’s Red Monochromes are made from fabrics that once belonged to strangers and personal garments, presented in various shades of red, including hand-dyed textiles. Describing his process as 'painting with a needle,' Lino’s use of industrial medical garments and hospital textiles transforms these remnants into seductive pulsating abstractions charged with tension. This series takes on a corporeal landscape where red threads course through neutral fabric like veins and arteries, evocative of the body's cardiovascular system. The contrast between vivid reds against stark whites suggests both the vitality of the body and the sterile precision of medical environments while stitched webs resemble surgical sutures, transforming scars, both physical and psychological, into a visual language of repair and resilience. Roberto Maria Lino (b. 1996 Naples, Italy) lives and works in Rome where he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. Focusing on the human body and the histories of medicine and industry, Lino weaves multimedia abstractions that probe the trauma, healing, and fragility of human experience. Throughout childhood, starting at age four, Lino accompanied his father, a Neapolitan heart surgeon, into the operating theater to observe open-heart surgeries. This unique exposure has profoundly shaped Lino's thematic exploration of the human body. The materiality behind Lino's practice is as compelling as the narratives he creates. Repurposing medical garments and ephemera, he breathes new life into hospital detritus, sparking dialogues about medicine and its commodification. This integration of recycled materials raises questions about the life cycle of hospitals and the impact of industrialized medicine. In each Sutura , Lino unveils a corporeal landscape. The red lines, resembling veins or arteries, carve through the neutral canvas, suggesting the network of the human cardiovascular system. The stark contrast between the vivid red and the sterile white fabric recalls the raw intensity of life coursing through the clinical and often impersonal world of medical treatment. Lino has been honored with artist residencies in Italy and Germany. His works have been exhibited in various institutions, including Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Fondazione107 in Turin, and Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa in Venice. In 2024, Lino won the International Prize Generazione Contemporanea, taking center stage at Fondazione Nicola del Roscio in Rome and solidifying his presence in the Italian contemporary art scene.

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