A Charles X-style walnut bookcase holds part of the artist’s valuable collection of books, packed in plastic bags and hidden behind women’s and men’s clothing suspended on hangers from the shelves. The bookcase is the same one used for the work that went by the name Interno/Esterno (inv. 3538), presented in this version at ‘Etc.’, the very last exhibition the artist designed, for the Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice, in which the written word played a decisive role: engraved on the walls, carved into doormats, hidden in inaccessible books on the shelves. The artist wrote: ‘Something real, not metaphorical is offered for sale: inherited furniture, a collection of books gathered over twenty years. One neither offers nor buys just a skill, but an attempt at “reality”.’1 At the ‘Etc.’ exhibition, Libraria was displayed in a room in front of a large doormat, served up as a counterpoint to the two similar bookcases placed at the entrance on the stairs (inv. 698).

1. F. Mauri in Fabio Mauri. Interno / Esterno, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Galleria Anna D'Ascanio and Florence, Galleria Carini), edited by Lara-Vinca Masini, Alberto Boatto, Rome / Florence, 1990, p. 65.