MATERIALS: Methacrylate sculpture, electric light
DIMENSIONS: 220 × 100 × 90 cm
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome
CATALOGUE: O_1968_939
A methacrylate sculpture consisting of a column with a triangular base, at the top of which the apex of an isosceles pyramid was grafted onto a parallelepiped simulating a movie projector, pointing towards a cornice-screen hung on the wall, concealing an electric light that simulates a projection beam. Cinema a luce solida was a series of works varying in size and colour combinations that Fabio Mauri created for the Mana Art Market in Rome.1 They were displayed at an exhibition of the same name in 1968, along with two prototypes of Pila a luce solida (inv. 212 and 3504) and two exemplars of Disco bianco (inv. 1120 and 1129). Grande Cinema a luce solida was distinguished by being almost a third larger in size than the other works in the series. From a 1968 Fabrizio Dentice review, we learn: ‘some are in ordinary light, some are in black light, and some fluorescent light, enhanced by the special composition of Perspex that gradually becomes impregnated with it, charging up like a battery’.2 In Mauri’s Cinema pieces, the ray of ‘solid light’, first used a few months earlier in Pila, conquered the space in front of the wall, forming ‘crystallised extroversions of the screen’3 that, Dentice notes, ‘rather than decoration, usher in a kind of motionless and perpetual happening to the environment’.4 Presented a few months after his Luna work-environment (inv. 922), Mauri’s Cinema a luce solida took his work in an increasingly performative direction, offering a link between his 1950s screens and his 1970s projections onto bodies and objects, in which the thought/projection combo became laden with an ideological component.
1. See Disco bianco, inv. 1120.
2. F. Dentice in Fabio Mauri 1959–1969, catalogue of the exhibition (Studio d’arte Tonineli, Rome, 1969), edited by C. Vivaldi, Rome, 1969, p. 83.
3. F. Mauri in A. Madesani, Le icone fluttuanti, Bruno Mondadori, Milan, 2002, p. 177.
4. F. Dentice in Fabio Mauri 1959–1969, catalogue of the exhibition (Studio d’arte Tonineli, Rome, 1969), edited by C. Vivaldi, Rome, 1969, p. 83.
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.
2010, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Attraverso le collezioni II: Quadro scultura – scultura quadro, 11 March – 2 May, curated by Massimo Mininni.
2011, Caserta, Reggia di Caserta, 1961-2011: dalle collezioni Gnam di Roma e Terrae Motus di Caserta, 13 July – 13 November, curated by Paola Raffaella David, Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, Rita Camerlingo.
2016-2017, Naples, Museo Madre, Retrospettiva a luce solida, 26 November 2016 – 6 March 2017, curated by Laura Cherubini, Andrea Viliani.
2021, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Anton Giulio Bragaglia. L’archivio di un visionario, 30 June – 3 October, curated by Claudia Palma, Elena Alexia Casagrande, Mario Gatti, Bianca Sofia Romaldi.
Flash Art, Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, October 1968, p. 3 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, exhibition catalogue, Studio d’Arte Toninelli, Rome, edited by Cesare Vivaldi (Rome: Studio d’Arte Toninelli, 1969), pp. 81–95 (ill.).
Studio G.S., Stefano Mantovani, "Gli oggetti di una casa”, in Interni, no. 29, Milan, May 1969, (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. 108–109 (ill.).
Il “Mana” di Nancy Marotta, edited by Stefano Marotta, Andrea Orsini (Rome: Es Architetture, 1995), n.p. (ill.).
Angela Madesani, Le icone fluttuanti. Storia del cinema d'artista e della videoarte in Italia (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2002), p. 177.
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna & Maxxi. Le collezioni 1958-2008, edited by Stefania Frezzotti, Carolina Italiano, Angelandreina Rorro (Milan: Electa, 2009), p. 456 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), p. 62.
Fabio Mauri. Archivio di memoria, edited by Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi (Rome: Numero cromatico editore, 2015), pp. 102–103 (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. 109.
