Venues: Prato · Milan · Lugano
Years: 2017–2020
Curator: Elisabetta Rizzuto

“Indeterminazione” is Mauchi’s first anthological exhibition covering works from 1996 to 2016, curated by Elisabetta Rizzuto.

For Mauchi, who has been a photographer for over twenty years, photography is a visual gesture — a wei wu wei: an action without artifice, simple, conscious and immediate, that requires knowledge and technical mastery.

His is the gesture of non-temporality, transcending the linearity between past and present. As Kundera writes, “perhaps it is only in exceptional moments that we become aware of our years, while for most of the time we are ageless.” Mauchi’s work presents itself as a vertical thought that captures the meanings of things happening together, in a dimension where there is no before and no after.

In Mauchi’s vision, black and white are inseparable elements, similar to the yin and yang of oriental philosophy. Black carries qualities of coldness, darkness and depth, while white manifests as warm, luminous and dynamic. In this chromatic dialogue, grey emerges as an intermediary element — undefined and self-complementary.

Mauchi’s photographic technique is distinguished by graphic compositions reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy’s “grass style”. The artist constantly searches for a natural harmony existing beyond the object of representation, often no longer recognisable even to the most attentive eye. His works portray the relationships between objects, exploring complexity through contrast and the multiscalarity of geometries, densities, boundaries and reflections.

According to Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy, the observer inevitably alters reality in the very act of observation. Similarly, in Mauchi’s works, each representation of reality is imprecise and indefinite, open to multiple interpretations. The artist thus leads us to question the “illusory emptiness of appearances.”

His shots present layerings and repetitions where the dimension of reality continually escapes, giving way to playful, surreal and symbolic experimentations of the subconscious, generating synesthetic sensations wrapped in apparent silence.

Press

The exhibition received coverage in the Italian contemporary art press. The critical text, written by curator Elisabetta Rizzuto, connects Mauchi’s practice to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: as in quantum physics — where the act of observing generates unpredictable changes — Mauchi’s photography remains “imprecise and indefinite, generating an infinite range of perceptions.”

In early 2017, LATO (Prato) presented the exhibition as part of a thematic programme dedicated to contemporary black and white photography, alongside works by Helmut Morganti and Andrea Buzzichelli — three distinct personal and poetic approaches to the photographic discipline.

Sources:
Mauchi – Indeterminazione – Artribune (LATO, Prato)
Mauchi – Indeterminazione – Artribune (Spazio Nour, Milano)
Spazio Nour – Exibart
Spazio Nour – Artribune
LATO Prato – Celeste Network