Paolo Porelli and Mattia Vernocchi: Contemporary Ceramics from Italy is on view at Stadtmuseum Siegburg, Siegburg
July 11 – August 30, 2026
Divenire: tra materia, storia e natura
Becoming: between matter, history and nature
In this exhibition, the Italian ceramic artists Paolo Porelli and Mattia Vernocchi present two forms of expression with distinct artistic connotations that bridge the conceptual gap between figuration and abstraction.
Paolo Porelli (1966) originally comes from a background in painting/ trained as a painter. Through his explorations of art history, he has internalised the canon of European art history and has focused primarily on the depiction of figures from ancient mythology and Christian iconography. He devoted himself to the medium of ceramics at a very early stage, using it to explore the topoi of the figure in art and thereby developing his own personal style, which he has refined over many years. Paolo Porelli creates archetypal figures, starting from an original stereotype which he transforms into a multitude of new subjects of an alienated, metaphysical nature. Thus, a 5th-century statue of Minerva – goddess of wisdom, war and craftsmanship – served as the starting point for a series of female figures who are recognisable as such, yet at the same time abstracted and transformed through free formal inventions. They embody rational thought, but also strength, violence and madness. In their symbiotic hybrid form, they remain alien and mysterious, present yet mythically ethereal. Another group of figures is based on the Sibyl, the ancient Roman seer and prophetess. Here too, Porelli transforms the classical, archaic figure into something enigmatic and ambiguous by veiling faces, heads and torsos with flowing hoods and placing surreal attributes in their hands instead of the traditional book. The multitude of small orange Protestant Madonnas contrasts with the uniqueness of the Virgin Mary; they seek connections between rigid religious concepts and open up the physicality of the image to a transformative dialectic that transcends its aesthetics.
Mattia Vernocchi (1980) analyses the object in its transition from practical functionality to its informal sublimation. Clay is the primary medium, which Vernocchi likes to combine and fuse with other, contradictory materials. In this way, he merges everyday objects such as plates in a draining rack into an unstable abstraction, stripped of their functionality. Cages, from which charred and fused matter drips out beyond recognition, create a dystopian reality. This fragile materiality, enveloped by the spectre of destruction, is joined by anthropomorphic figures which, formed from rudimentary lumps of clay, take on analogies to the corporeality of human beings. Nevertheless, they remain abstract and only evoke associations with archaic figures when viewed in the context of the cages or in the context of Paolo Porelli’s mythological sculptures. At the same time, Mattia Vernocchi uses the transformative potential of materials to reveal the very process of his works’ creation. Alongside his objects and figures, he is drawn to exploring nature and the inherent cycle of growth and death. The structures of grass, stalks, trees and bark inspire him to create replicas in clay and concrete, which, through their material transformation, take on the appearance of abstract sculptures. Through the contrast between concrete and nature, he explores the opposition and simultaneous coexistence of these two substances in our contemporary civilisation.
Both artists draw on a personal reflection on industrial society, excessive consumption, alienation and the loss of nature, which they use as a creative pretext to produce works that lead back to humanity’s archaic roots and to a necessary reunification with nature and our fellow human beings.
In the exhibition at the Stadtmuseum Siegburg, their works meet in person for the first time and meaningfully complement one another to form a ceramic discourse on the roots of our being and becoming.
Text by Dr Gundula Caspary, Stadtmuseum Siegburg
Contact
stadtmuseum@stadtbetriebe-siegburg.de
Stadtmuseum Siegburg
Market 46
53721 Siegburg
Germany
Photos by Paolo Porelli, Mattia Vernocchi, and Lorenzo Palmieri
