Elena Bordignon ONIG Milano 2004

Maurizio Mercuri stacks, joins, disassembles, destroys and recreates all that, in time, he has collected in his study in San Donato, a small place in the countryside of Fabriano, in Le Marche, where he lives and works. Most of his works are characterized by a mixture of technological refuse found in his exploratory trips, electronics wrecks and obsolete electric household appliances assembled to create playful machines. Re-using by transforming seems to be the motto of his work, the formula or the method that weaves a large part of his works. Like in a puzzle or, if he were a philosopher, like in puns, he loves overturning the function of things (the fountain spirting beer, the suitcase with sprouts, the broken vase fixed with silicone etc...) changing the direction of meaning (Hello Zucchi? What would you like to have?), removing the precision of physical and mental mechanisms. Most of the works produced by Maurizio Mercuri amaze and arouse curiosity just for their capability for desecrating commonplaces, reversing previsions, amplifying the absurdities that form the fabric of reality, its paradoxes and folly. We wonder: where does art start and where does the play start? To what extent is his work affected by chance, negligence, time, the public, train schedules, patience, rain, space?
In the performance "Onig" instead of producing real objects, Mercuri has thought of using his artistic career as a subject with which to work out his nth device. In a short stretch of time we will witness the description of his artistic career, from his first steps in the art world, to the galleries he worked with, to the critics he collaborated with. "Onig" is the result of a reflection on time, on the duration and insubstantiality of things, on the vanity of events and their absurdity. Like De Chirico in the painting "Enigma dell'ora", a work arising from the painter's will to represent time through a watch a stop, Mercuri wishes to describe himself through his ten-year work. But who will be really described? Whose story are we going to hear?
Elena Bordignon Onig Milan 2004