An installation created in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella in Florence as part of events to mark the sixth centenary of architect Filippo Brunelleschi’s birth. At first glance the work appeared to be a pyramid, but it was missing a portion of its rear: ‘Starting with Brunelleschi’s discarded sand, I built a pile, that is, a facsimile of the universe. And this universe, which is a truncated cone, is cut into on one side,’1 Mauri explained. A spotlight beam on the sand cast a regularly shaped shadow onto the wall behind it, ‘that is, it projects the arbitrariness of a geometric figure that takes absolutely no account of the cut, the incompleteness of the cone, hidden from frontal viewers.’2 To the right, on the steps of the stone staircase near the work, a plaque reads, ‘L’universo è incompleto’ (The universe is incomplete) written using the same sand. ‘This pile of waste sand is poorly located, that is, not geometrically situated, on three medieval graves. On the right […] are two staircases, very beautiful ones from two different eras, I believe or, if anything, in two distinctly different styles, combining to form a unicum, which is not, in fact, chronologically the case. It has become one. I chose the place not at random, not because there were no other spaces, but precisely because of the glaring demonstration of these two staircases, which could proceed almost infinitely and instead rest one on top of one another, like two non-continuous, totally overlapping universes, absolutely and seemingly complete … in fact, incomplete and conjugate.’3

1. AAVV, Filippo Brunelleschi: la sua opera e il suo tempo, Cento Di, Florence 1980, vol. II, p. 1005.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 1,006.