Made by Mauri a few weeks before his death, five large doormats doormats have five definitive statements on art, the artist and the universe engraved into them,1 thoughts in artwork form, legible negatively through contrast with the floor. The public is invited to walk on them, consume them, make them disappear. Marking the crossing of a threshold, the doormat is a liminal object; like a screen, it is a membrane between two worlds, a bearer of content shaped through interaction with the viewer. ‘Zerbini, to be stepped on, almost as a last resort. Laid out at the entrance to the Rizzo Gallery, trampled until they disappear. The words, concepts, reworkings or interpretations of the patrons and passers-by will survive; the memory of the word trampled on as an event will survive.’2 Mauri had five copies of each doormat made, with the exception of Nessun segno particolare di cultura è fuori da un testo generale storico e nessun testo generale storico o interpretazione di mondo è fuori dall’enigma più generale dell’universo (No Particular Sign of Culture is Outside a General Historical Text and No General Historical Text or World Interpretation is Outside the Most General Enigma of the Universe) (cat. 691), of which just two copies were made.

1. The five sentences are: ‘No particular sign of culture is outside a general historical text and no general historical text or world interpretation is outside the broader enigma of the universe’; ‘I was not new’; ‘Art exists because it is history and world’; ‘The universe, like the infinite, we see in pieces’; ‘Perhaps art is not autonomous’.
2. F. Mauri, ‘Etc. L’ultima parola’, in Flash Art, no. 277, Milan, August–Septembr 2009, p. 50.