From Monday 8 July to Sunday 6 October 2024, the Fondazione Merz is presenting the exhibition Qualcosa che toglie il peso (‘Something that takes away the weight’) dedicated to Mario Merz.

The exhibition presents a selection of works by Mario Merz, including installations, igloos, tables, canvases and works on paper. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the large work entitled Quattro tavoli in forma di foglie di magnolia (Four tables in the form of magnolia leaves -1985), exhibited here for the first time in Europe, created on the occasion of the solo show held at Sperone Westwater and Leo Castelli in New York.

Something that takes away the weight starts from the concept described by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and linked to the need to identify the profound nature behind patterns in order to arrive at the basis of human thought, which in its diversity is always defined by laws that escape the flow of time and the variety of environments.
In Lévi-Strauss’s concept of structural anthropology, structures are recognised as something that belongs to the unconscious, similar to the principle of reciprocity that is at the origin of the transition from nature to culture.

The phrase that gives the exhibition its title, Something that takes away the weight, was extrapolated from a text by Mario Merz and relates to this need to look at nature and the passage of time in order to achieve a sense of conceptual lightness, which is found in the group of works presented.