Dario Bellini il Riformista 17giugno 2004

...I pick up a big shell from the corner of the gallery, automatically I bring it to my ear, from the hollow I hear , very softly, the sounds of a beach, bathers' voices, announcements from loudspeakers, coconut sellers. From a circular white concrete fountain, like those you find in courtyards with small statues of dwarves and Madonnas, spirts a yellow liquid seething and foaming in the basin, it is beer, the fragrance of fermented hop spreads in the gallery. On a table top there are some walkman earphones connected to a wire, no sounds or messages, but at once one realizes that they slightly warm the ears through microscopic resistances (!?!) Well? In a small room, two metres by one, that is the porter's lodge of a block of flat at 42 Corso Garibaldi in Milan, a very kind lady with infinite grace and dedication, welcomes visitors and, at their request, tells them about the earlier works by Maurizio Mercuri (Fabriano 1965). On her wrist she is wearing a watch from which comes out, as if it were a cannula, a small cable unrolling towards some rudimental cardboard acoustic boxes. An unceasing ticking marks the never-stopping beat of time perhaps of the heart.An accidental overload puts the light out, the wrist glitters with the small light of a glow-worm, a red led. Perhaps the lady is an android.
Maurizio Mercuri, performance at Neon Gallery Milan

Dario Bellini