Guido Molinari da Ricognizione in tempo reale Edizioni Aspasia 1999

The threee works exhibited by Maurizio Mercuri develop in a common atmosphere: it occurred that the visitors to the vernissage of Area (exhibition at the Salvatore +Caroline Ala Gallery Milano1998) were introduced by a butler, dressed in an ancient costume, standing at the entrance door; after etering, the visitors got to the fountain from which beer instead of water was spouting. This time kitsch is out of question because the artist does not want to ransom bad taste already revalued by Pop art and then in the Eighties. In this case the artist's re-elaboration goes beyond the mechanisms of industry ready to make any kind of gadgets.Then the unusual fountain opens a confrontation first of all with the de-contextualization already carried out by art in the course of the century, entering into territories where the lightness of the associations and the meanings suggested by each part of the work offer an unheard-of result. In this way we are stimulated to activate unexpected connections in our system of filing reality, so as to short-circuit the information we already possess. And suddenly new unforeseen spaces of sense open up on the horizon.In the same way works another work by Mercuri: the teenager dummy, wearing a track suit, which is subjected to an odd test; through some loudspeakers, low frequency sounds bomb the dummys' stomach and back. We don't know if it is a finished work or the simulation of a performance, what is certain is that the enigmatic experiment shows us a situation where the poly-sensorial effects are mysteriously disconnected from fiction.