What is ugliness, where is it hiding, and how can it be made beautiful? Mario Palmieri's creative life revolves around a paradoxical desire. Obsessed by the uglification of the world—ugliness being provoked by humans, not nature—he wishes to transcend it, and beautify it enough to make it bearable. Thus Palmieri has been wandering around the world for a decade, inspecting the forms conceived by man, the cities, the empty lots, from Poland to Japan, with a stop in the Euro Disney park, prey to his obsession of giving them an esthetic form. Commissioned by the magazine Numéro, he works with composition, the warmth of the lights, the texture of the materials to make life more pleasant to look at: a systematic enterprise that has brought him to take a sidelong view and refuse all compromise.
2005 : Oriental Exploration of the archipel (next), TAF Gallery, Paris 2004 : PLV, Nogood gallery, Paris 2003 : Oriental Exploration of the archipel, Gebauw F, photographic month, Breda Holland 2002 : Jean Prouvé¹s houses, Jousse Gallery, Paris 2001 : Jean Prouvé¹s houses, (order), Villa de Noaïlles, Hyères 2000 : At the window, House of contemporary art, Fresnes 1999 : Photographic fair, Gallery Manu Timonéda, Aix en Provence 1998 : Everything but Manhattan, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
