DisGRAZIE by Bertozzi & Casoni, FaMa Gallery, Verona
1 October – 12 November 2011
Opening: Friday 30 September, hours 18.00-21.00
On 30th September 2011, from 6pm, FaMa Gallery in Verona holds the opening of the exhibition DisGRAZIE (DisGrace), an original exhibition project by Bertozzi & Casoni, who for the very first time will present a collection of new works investigating the relationship between art and nature and the expressive potential of matter in its multiple plastic and aesthetic meanings.
Through an experimental and conceptual reading of ceramic, a practice which has marked the research of the artists since 1980, the exhibition has two main sections:
The first consists of sods of earth containing different kinds of sedimentation, including waste and human and animal remains. These groups – where what we usually desire to remove has been buried -, are the humus prolifero from which sprout amazingly beautiful floral microcosms. The second section includes compressions of discarded waste recovered from the “rubbish dump” of the contemporary consumer society (tins, cans and scrap metal); from these heaps of waste emerge succulent plants, waterproof and robust enough to survive attack from the waste and to give it new vigour.
For the DisGrazie project at the FaMa Gallery, Bertozzi & Casoni “forge” an evocative and surreal setting in order to reveal the contradictions and chaos of postmodern life, addressing the recurring theme of vanitas with a unique, exuberant exhibition. All with the help of ceramic, a material that is fragile yet everlasting, which the artists manipulate in hybrid and polymorphous expressive ways with the strong desire to promote osmosis between art and life and to immortalise the transience of existence.
Notes on the artists:
Bertozzi & Casoni is a general partnership founded in 1980 in Imola. For thirty years artists have devoted themselves exclusively to ceramic as a possibility for painted sculpture, but in the second half of the 1990s a more conceptual aspect emerged in their work which would stimulate, towards the year 2000, a great turning point: Bertozzi & Casoni abandon the use of majolica to favour the use of ceramic materials of industrial origin. In 2004 they are invited to exhibit at the Tate in Liverpool (A Secret History of Clay) and in 2005 at the XIV Quadriennale in Rome. In 2007 they exhibit at Cà Pesaro, International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice, in 2008 at the Sforza Castle in Milan, in 2009 at the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, in 2010 at AVA All Visual Arts in London (Vanitas. The transience of Earthly Pleasures), at the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York (Interval), at the Sperone Gallery in Sent and at the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan (Italian sculpture in the 21st century). In 2011 they exhibit at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Ajaccio (Réflection sur la mort) and are once again invited to the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
FaMa Gallery
Corso Cavour 25/27, 37121 Verona
Tel. +39 045 8030985
Fax +39 045 8011410
info@famagallery.com
www.famagallery.com
