MATERIALS: Fire extinguisher, varnish
DIMENSIONS: 50 × 20 × 20 cm
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: O_1994_600
The words ‘Estintore ariano’ are painted in white along the top edge of an ordinary fire extinguisher. Mauri introduced the theme of the ideologically connoted object in the late 1980s. He subsequently developed it in the 1995 ‘Arierwiege’ exhibition-installation (inv. 1023), consisting of works-objects ‘bearing witness to the traditional membership of a community that consumed its prejudices’, in which each accessory, labelled ‘Aryan’, ‘aspires to evoke the ambiguous design of an ideology’.1
1. F. Mauri, ‘De Chirico spiato’, in Giorgio De Chirico: Nulla sine tragoedia gloria. Atti del Convegno Europeo di Studi, edited by C. Crescentini, m&m – maschietto e musolino, Florence, 2002, p. 305.
1998, Castelbasso (Teramo), Medieval village, Trasalimenti, 26 July – 21 August.
2001, Rome, A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, Fabio Mauri: Un’utile macchina. Massimo Bucchi: Le finestre sul cortile, 12 April – 5 May, curated by Francesco Moschini, Anna Rita Sordini.
2009, Monfalcone (Gorizia), GC.AC. – Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea, Fabio Mauri, 10 October – 1 November, curated by Andrea Bruciati.
2016-2017, Bergamo, GAMeC, Fabio Mauri: Arte per legittima difesa, 7 October 2016 – 15 January 2017, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio.
Fabio Mauri. Arte per legittima difesa, exhibition catalogue, GAMeC, Bergamo, edited by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (Bergamo: GAMeC Books, 2016), p. 100 (ill.).
