DIMENSIONS: 120 × 61 × 165 cm
INSCRIPTIONS: Signed and dated on a label hung on the backrest ‘m 97’
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: O_1997_445
A fabric-free skeleton of a wooden reclining chair, Chaise Longue is an ‘object designated for absolute recreation, albeit impractically so for the lack of cloth that would cumbersomely have guaranteed seating’.1 Shorn of its utilitarian function, the chair reveals itself to be an unfinished object presented for our contemplation. Rolled up on the backrest as if it were a museum label, the artist’s initials and the date of the work appear on articulating paper. Chaise Longue was first exhibited at Villa Mazzanti in Rome in place of the I numeri malefici installation (inv. 777) which, although already published in the catalogue, could not be exhibited due to unexpected technical problems.
1. D. Aceto in Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano, Lampi di stampa, Milan, 2009, p. 358.
1997, Rome, Villa Mazzanti and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Città natura, 21 April – 23 June, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
2002, Padula (Salerno), San Lorenzo Charterhouse, Le opere e i giorni, opening 29 September, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva.
2003, Venice, Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Fabio Mauri – Istantanea di un duca morto: Presentazione del Catalogo, 27 September, curated by Vittorio Urbani, Camilla Seibezzi, Gaetano Salerno.
2008, Rome, Oredaria Arti Contemporanee, Interiors, 18 April – 18 July, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva.
2016-2017, Naples, Museo Madre, Retrospettiva a luce solida, 26 November 2016 – 6 March 2017, curated by Laura Cherubini, Andrea Viliani.
2018, Naples, Church of San Giuseppe delle Scalze, Evidence of Contemporary Disquiet, 6 June – 31 July, curated by Davide Di Maggio.
Fabio Mauri. Picnic o il buon soldato, exhibition catalogue, Galleria La Tartaruga, Castelluccio di Pienza (Siena), edited by Plinio De Martiis (San Quirico d’Orcia, Siena: Editrice DonChisciotte, 1998), p. 52 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 357–359 (ill.).
Evidence of Contemporary Disquiet, exhibition catalogue, Church of San Giuseppe delle Scalze, Naples, edited by Davide Di Maggio, Francesca Blandino (Naples: Goethe-Institut, 2018), p. 73 (ill.).
