MATERIALS: Projection on quoted scale
PROJECTION: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Gertrud , 1964
16 mm film, black and white, sound, 116 min.
DIMENSIONS: Approx. 150 × 50 × 330 cm
Scale: 72 × 34 × 45 cm
Film case: 37.5 × 42.5 × 5.5 cm
Projector with profiler: 92 × 20 × 63 cm
Speaker: 25 × 12 × 15 cm
Easel: 78 × 48 × 110 cm
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: PR_1975_920
An installation consisting of a 16mm-film projector placed on a tripod, and a Berkel food scale resting on the floor, onto the plate of which Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film Gertrud was projected. The Danish director’s last masterpiece, the film tells the story of former opera singer Gertrud’s sentimental vicissitudes, unhappily married to a lawyer with political ambitions. At the very moment her husband is named Minister of Justice, she decides to leave him to vainly pursue a love affair that, repeatedly unfulfilled, leads her to a life of loneliness, before ultimately rejecting the hypocrisy of relationships. The film is characterised by long sequence shots, suspended atmospheres and silences, altenating with close-ups on gazes that do not meet, lost in expressive black and white. In the installation, these images flow slowly across the scales on which a needle marks out weight, a metaphor for the physical impact that, like projection, thought has on the world: ‘the opposite of the confused transparency with which we are led to imagine invisible things such as ideas, moral acts or feelings. These are solids. An idea can be as deadly as a blade rammed home.’1
1. F. Mauri, ‘Una idea / Un misfatto’, in Arte & Misfatti, catalogue of the exhibition (Galleria Bianca Pilat, Milan, 1994) Ellin Selae, Rivamonte Agordino, 1994, p. 55.
1975, Rome, Teatro in Trastevere, Senza Ideologia: Azione di Fabio Mauri dal ciclo Oscuramento, 9 December.
1976, Milan, Galleria Toselli, Senza, 18 May.
1978, Geneva, Fondazione Patino, Sans nouvelles de l’Europe, 25 May.
1978, Toronto, A Space, Fabio Mauri at A Space, 11–12 October.
1994, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Fabio Mauri. Opere e Azioni 1954-1994, 21 June – 5 October, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu.
1996, Los Angeles, MOCA – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945, 16 March – 28 July, curated by Kerry Brougher.
1996-1997, Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts, Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945, 20 September 1996 – 5 January 1997, curated by Kerry Brougher (travelling: 1996, Los Angeles).
1997, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, La stanza degli specchi: Arte e film dal 1945, 2 July – 1 September, curated by Kerry Brougher (travelling: 1996, Los Angeles).
1997-1998, Chicago, MCA’s Contemporary Art Circle, Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945, 11 October 1997 – 21 January 1998, curated by Kerry Brougher (travelling: 1996, Los Angeles).
2003, Tourcoing-Lille, Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Fabio Mauri – L’écran mental, 1 March – 27 April, curated by Dominique Païni.
2016-2017, Naples, Museo Madre, Retrospettiva a luce solida, 26 November 2016 – 6 March 2017, curated by Laura Cherubini, Andrea Viliani.
“Senza ideologia di Fabio Mauri”, in Flash Art, no. 60–61, Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, December 1975, p. 15.
Fabio Mauri, “Proiezioni su oggetti, Una mostra di Fabio Mauri a Milano”, in Domus, no. 562, Milan, September 1976, p. 53 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Le proiezioni 1970-1978 (Macerata / Falconara: La nuova foglio editrice - piano inclinato / Galleria del Falconiere, 1978), n.p. (ill.).
56 + 1: Cente d’art contemporain Genève 1974-1979, edited by Adelina von Fürstenberg (Geneva: Cente d’art contemporain Genève, 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. 155–161 (ill.).
Massimo Mininni, Arte in scena: La performance in Italia 1965-1980 (Ravenna: Danilo Montanari Editore, 1995), p. 135.
Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945, exhibition catalogue, MOCA – The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, edited by Kerry Brougher, Russell Ferguson (New York: Monacelli Press, 1996), pp. 95–98 (ill.).
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. 49 (ill.).
Floriano De Santi, “L'arte di Fabio Mauri: un inventario per dare al presente il senso della vita”, in Teléma, Year VI, no. 20, Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Rome, Spring 2000, p. 122 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri. L’écran mental, exhibition catalogue, Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing-Lille, edited by Dominique Païni (Lille, 2003), pp. 54, 57 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Le fotografie, edited by Laura Cherubini (Turin: Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 2005), p. 218 (ill.).
Il marmo e la celluloide: Arte contemporanea e visioni cinematografiche, exhibition catalogue, Villa della Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta (Lucca), edited by Marco Senaldi (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2006), pp. 26–27 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Scritti in mostra. L’avanguardia come zona 1958-2008, edited by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2008), pp. 44–47 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 138, 148 (ill.).
Laura Cherubini, “Projections”, in Fabio Mauri. Ideology and Memory, edited by Studio Fabio Mauri (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2012), pp. 88, 90–91 (ill.).
Elisabetta Catalano, Work with Fabio Mauri, edited by Laura Cherubini (Milan: Maretti Editore, 2013), p. 91 (ill.).
Valérie Da Costa, Fabio Mauri: le passé en actes (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2018), no. 116, p. 207 (ill.).
Laura Cherubini, Contro corrente: I grandi solitari dell’arte italiana: Alighiero Boetti, Gino De Dominicis, Luciano Fabro, Fabio Mauri, Vettor Pisani, Marisa Merz (Milan: Christian Marinotti edizioni, 2020), p. 117.
Reversing the Eye. Arte Povera and beyond 1960-75: photography, film, video, exhibition catalogue, Jeu de Paume and LE BAL, Paris, edited by Quentin Bajac, Diane Dofour, Giuliano Sergio (Paris: Atelier EXB, 2022), p. 219 (ill.).
