MATERIALS: Photograph projected onto wicker chair and wall, audio speakers
PROJECTION: Senza Ideologia , 1975
Photo slide, colour, still
DIMENSIONS: Variable
Wicker chair: 90.5 × 60 × 69 cm
Iron stool: 44.5 × 32 × 32 cm
SOUND: Johann Sebastian Bach or Tromba bulgara
PHOTOGRAPHY: Elisabetta Catalano
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: PR_1977_3390
A photograph of a nude woman shot from behind, projected onto the back of a wicker chair that, placed at a calculated distance, cast its shadow on the wall behind, overlapping the projection and composing the image of a seated woman. The back belonged to actress and singer Isabelle de Valvert from the work Senza ideologia (inv. 3321), shot by Elisabetta Catalano in her studio. ‘Reunification of these two distant terms occurs with an unexpected and mysterious leap through a duplication of the two images projected onto the wall, where the enlarged, perfectly defined woman appears seated on the shadow of the armchair through an inexplicably inverted optical effect, one that is turned inwards.’1 Mediation of the image multiplies, and with it various levels of ambiguity of perception, ‘endowed with an elusive, insidiously mystifying power’.2 The installation was accompanied by a soundtrack of music by Bach, replaced in the 2000s by Tromba bulgara.
1. S. Sinisi in L’ombra, catalogue of the exhibition (Casa del Mantegna, Mantova, 1979) edited by S. Sinisi, Mantova 1979, n.p.
2. Ibid.
1977, Certaldo (Florence), Palazzo Pretorio, L’Esperienza, 1 October – 30 November, curated by Lara-Vinca Masini.
1979, Mantua, Casa del Mantegna, L’ombra, 22 September – 21 October, curated by Silvana Sinisi.
2000, Pavia, Teatro Comunale Fraschini, Monopoli Arte Contemporanea, Akropolis: Catarsi dell’arte contemporanea, 20 May – 17 June, curated by Giacomo Zaza.
2003, Tourcoing-Lille, Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Fabio Mauri – L’écran mental, 1 March – 27 April, curated by Dominique Païni.
2006-2007, Siena, Palazzo delle Papesse, d’Ombra, 14 October 2006 – 7 January 2007, curated by Lea Vergine.
2007, Nuoro, MAN – Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, d’Ombra, 26 January – 6 May, curated by Lea Vergine (travelling: 2006, Siena).
2017, São Paulo, Bergamin & Gomide Gallery, Fabio Mauri: Senza Arte, 11 March – 29 April.
L’ombra, exhibition catalogue, Casa del Mantegna, Mantua, edited by Silvana Sinisi (Mantua, 1979), n.p. (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954-1994, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu (Milan / Rome: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori / Carte Segrete, 1994), pp. 157, 163 (ill.).
d’Ombra, exhibition catalogue, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, edited by Lea Vergine (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2006), pp. 60–61 (ill.).
Gianluca Marziani, “Oldenburg il gigante e le ombre magiche”, in Panorama, Year XLIV, no. 46, Milan, 16 November 2006, p. 250 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Work with Fabio Mauri, edited by Laura Cherubini (Milan: Maretti Editore, 2013), pp. 100–101 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. Archivio di memoria, edited by Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi (Rome: Numero cromatico editore, 2015), p. 137 (ill.).
