Big exhibition in Pietrasanta by Bertozzi & Casoni, masters of contemporary ceramics

From Oct. 17, 2020 to Feb. 7, 2021, the Sant’Agostino complex in Pietrasanta will host a solo exhibition by the celebrated duo Bertozzi & Casoni entitled Bertozzi & Casoni. Tempo, curated by Mauro Daniele Lucchesi and Alessandro Romanini, and promoted by the City of Pietrasanta in collaboration with the Quattro Coronati Association.

For Pietrasanta, the artistic fellowship founded in Imola in 1980 by Giampaolo Bertozzi (Borgo Tossignano, 1957) and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni (Lugo di Romagna, 1961) has devised a specific installation to actively involve the viewer in a reflection on time. The two great masters of contemporary ceramic sculpture thus bring to Sant’Agostino large-scale works such as Composizione n. 14, Earth, Electric Chair with Butterflies, works that dialogue with the history of art (from Vermeer to Warhol) and a series of still lifes from the iconographic themes of vanitas (vanity), and memento mori (remember you must die), allegories of the human being’s struggle with the tyrant Cronos that metaphorically illustrate human weaknesses in a participatory way. An itinerary that aims to highlight how Bertozzi & Casoni, who are present in some of the most important international collections, are universally recognized as those who have been able to harmonize the two opposing aspects of the artistic scene, the ability to know how to harmoniously synthesize conceptual design and high manual technical expertise.

The idea behind the project is to make the viewer leave with the perception that, despite the difficult times in which we live, art and beauty will once again save us or at least redeem our ephemeral dimension. “Bertozzi & Casoni’s approach to the creative process,” explain Mauro Daniele Lucchesi and Alessandro Romanini, “has always been characterized by an ethical attitude that sees sculptural production as a translation into plastic form of reflections of an existential and philosophical nature, with the aim of involving the viewer in a participatory way. A work that is carried out by relentlessly experimenting with hypotheses of dialogue between the two dimensions, the spatial and the temporal, finding fruitful formulas that have advanced the languages of expression and creativity.”

Bertozzi & Casoni have held exhibitions in major national and international museums (including the Tate Liverpool, the Morandi Museum in Bologna, the MeÅŸher in Istanbul, the Villa Reale in Monza, the Museum of Arts in Catanzaro) and two editions of the Venice Biennale. They also participated in this year’s Festival of Philosophy in Modena by presenting at the Bertozzi & Casoni Museum in Sassuolo the work Quinta Stagione (Fifth Season), a portrait representing the season of contemporaneity. The nineteen works, housed in the spaces of the church and cloister of Sant’Agostino, mark an anthological path through the articulate work of the two artists who, throughout their artistic careers, have been able to give ceramics such equal dignity with the other expressive media of contemporary art that it has rightfully entered the panorama of the major arts. In their works Bertozzi and Casoni reproduce with extraordinary technical skill everyday objects used and then abandoned (fuel oil drums, waste baskets, “sparecchia ture,” detergent boxes), to which they add beautiful animals (colorful parrots, red ladybugs, chameleons, iguanas).

The exhibition will be open with free admission in the church and cloister of Sant’Agostino in Pietrasanta from Oct. 17 to Feb. 7, 2021 with the following hours: Tuesday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 to 7 p.m. For information see the Museo dei Bozzetti website.

Image: Bertozzi & Casoni, Nulla è come come appare (2018; ceramic, silvered bronze and steel)

Big exhibition in Pietrasanta by Bertozzi & Casoni, masters of contemporary ceramics

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