Adrian Paci
Adrian Paci, Secondo Pasolini 1
Adrian Paci, Secondo Pasolini 2
Adrian Paci, Secondo Pasolini 3
How did this work come about?
When they talked to me about the Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art I thought that instead of submitting drawings I wanted to do something that was almost handcrafted, like painting on ceramic. I was working with some images taken from Il Vangelo secondo Matteo by Pasolini and I thought of trying to work with the same images on another support. That’s how this work arose: three drawings taken from the film that rest on three types of different earths.
What’s the concept behind the work?
Certainly, it is not a conceptual work and if there is a thought it must be sought in the work itself. I remember that while chatting with Corrado Levi he talked to me about what he called “knowledge of the hands”. Fantastic! Especially for those who want to work with ceramic, it’s important to realise that there is more than just mental knowledge!
Adrian Paci
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Il Libro d'Oro del Terzo Paradiso
The Golden Book of the Third Paradise
The ceramic work Terzo Paradiso has the same hourglass shape as the Segno Arte that I designed as a personal trademark in 1976. I engraved “The New Symbol of Infinity” on it, using a single line to trace three rings instead of the conventional two. The centre ring is dedicated to the Terzo Paradiso.
The first paradise is the land, completely regulated by the intelligence of nature, while the second one is the artificial paradise created by man. This second paradise is polluting the natural paradise to such an extent that life on the planet is being put at risk.
The Terzo Paradiso is the name of a new stage in which humanity finds a balance between the artificial world and the natural one. Terzo Paradiso is the inspirational legend of a responsible change of the society for which everyone must be involved.
Over the next few years 32 replicas of the Libro d’oro del Terzo Paradiso will be presented to those persons or institutions who have made distinguished commitments to the mission of the Terzo Paradiso
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Franco Raggi
Franco Raggi, Ponte da tavolo
Franco Raggi, Ponte da tavolo
Franco Raggi, Architettura divisa
Bridges and little houses
There are no particular reasons why a centrepiece or a bookend has to have certain shapes. The former only remains in the centre of the table and, if it's lucky, will hold flowers that are more elegant than it is; the bookend continues to support as long as it's needed. When the shelf is complete, the bookend has long to go higher or lower and sometimes inside, doing nothing. That's why I wanted to consider these objects also when they're at rest. In this way, even without flowers or books they express a formal dignity that perhaps can save them from being relegated to the interior of closts.
I conceivedof them in ceramic or terracotta and I have designed them as small pieces of architecture for a domestic landscape. They were created by skilled hands of ceramists from Albisola.
Franco Raggi
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. (prototype)
Two feet in one shoe
Joined shoes in ceramic. Philological reconstruction of an idea from 1975.
In June ‘75, some architects, designers and artists decided to create improbable objects in the courtyard of an old house in Milan. The first “Seminar of Global Tools” was held, the school of Radical Design without a specific location. The theme: “The body and constraints”. The intention was to compare the consolidated and accepted practice of technological, comfortable and functional design with a nomadic method for an archaic and dysfunctional design. The logical and procedural short-circuit generated useless objects, which were also provoking and reflexive, about the certainties of the project and about the need to keep alive the dialogue between art and design, and between the body as a primary tool and objects as preparatory prostheses to creatively re-–establish the idea of the form/function relationship. Seminar products included: tube eyeglasses to look yourself in the eyes, constricting bracelets, clogs to walk uphill, elastic clothes for persons joined together, and these shoes for a compulsory frontal comparison. Made experimentally in clay, they propose the frontal fusion of two different shoes, preventing any possibility of walking, and force the two persons wearing them into an inevitable but controlled promiscuousness of bodies and looks. The Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art gave me the opportunity to reconstruct in ceramic the object that at first glance seemed to be useless. I like to bring back to life the spirit and the intention, as well as the subtle charm of an undoubtedly functional product of the project made thirty years ago with Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi and Nazareno Noia.
Franco Raggi
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools.. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore. From left to right: Stefano Parodi, Mayor of Albissola Marina and Lionello Parodi, Mayor of the Citiy of Albisola Superiore
David Robbins
David Robbins, Ice Cream Social Bowls
Notes on The Ice Cream Social
An American tradition, an ice cream social is an occasion for the members of a community (regardless of how that community chooses to define itself) to temporarily put aside their labour, gather, enjoy confectionery refreshments, relax with friends, and perhaps begin new friendships. My Ice Cream Socials do all this while adding a layer of something else - something self-eflective, consciously thematic, and metaphorical.
The project has evolved for more than a decade now, gradually, via a casual, now-and-–then approach. Along the way, it has increased in scale and expanded into a variety of formats. To date the ICS has comprised live events, visual artworks for galleries and museums, a novella, a TV show, a feature movie script - and now, in collaboration with La Nuova Fenice in Albisola, ceramic ice cream bowls!
David Robbins
Denis Santachiara
Denis Santachiara, Qualc'uno. ”Undisciplined”, Civic Art Gallery, Savona, 2006
Qualc’uno is a vase that can be used in two ways: resting like a traditional vase, it can contain a plant or a bunch of flowers, while turned upside-down, it can hold and exalt a single flower.
Working on the common idea of the terracotta vase, Santachiara proposes a shift, combining the iconography of the pottery vase with a noble material like ceramic. Through this project, defined by the artist as “white, multifunctional and deviating”, the ceramic removes and promotes the classic image of the vase. With Qualc’uno Santachiara transforms the colour of the fired material into the white of the ceramic and he replaces the functional uniqueness usually attributed to the vase with “a deviating double function”.
Studio Demakersvan
Studio Demakersvan, Proud Mary
Studio Demakersvan, Proud Mary
Proud Mary
he process of making ceramic doll parts was already industrialized way before their decoration was. While their bodies could be made mechanically, painters were still giving them delicate faces, nails and shoelaces by hand. Proud Mary is a family of ceramic stools inspired by the craft of ceramic doll painting. They show their age by decoration, starting with a white stool with black decoration, and ending up the other way around.
Studio Demakersvan
Paolo Ulian
Paolo Ulian, Una seconda vita
Paolo Ulian, Una seconda vita
Everything gets thrown away, even when only a minor repair is needed. Things are thrown away without asking if a certain object can still be useful, perhaps only partially; if an object, that has lost its original function, can become the source of new opportunities. It would be nice if this project led to these considerations. And so I imagined a centrepiece with a pattern of through holes that, in addition to acting as a decoration, would also make it possible to recover some parts of the object, if it broke. Within the centrepiece, the pattern creates a series of elliptically shapes that, if an accident should happen, could be recovered and detached from the context, becoming small, independent bowls. And so, accidental breakage is transformed from a negative event into one that generates new stimuli and new situations.
Paolo Ulian
Guido Venturini
Guido Venturini, Fioraio 1
Guido Venturini, Fioraio 2
Guido Venturini, Fioraio
Fioraio
This can be considered part of the tradition of anthropomorphic vases, always present in the history of everyday objects, with an ornamental or symbolic value: from the Palaeolithic to the Renaissance, and from Chagall to Picasso.
The vase is cut at the shoulders, and thus headless. It should be finished by inserting flowers, but if you forget, for a few days you can enjoy the splendid material-animalier-abstract decoration. In any case, the periods without flowers should not be too long, at least in the spring.
Guido Venturini
Guido Venturini, Puzzola
Guido Venturini, Cagarino
Polecat and Little Pooper
To avoid dangerous falls, and consequently getting stuck in the family toilet, I created this comfortable cagheuse (poop house) for children. I thought of enhancing the object by using a premium material like ceramic, fully aware of the extreme importance attributed to faeces during the pre-verbal age and the years immediately following such a period (in these uncivil times it is customary to do it in a plastic container, that when it is scratched also retains gems and bacteria, with the imaginable consequences for hygiene!).
Presently, two decorative versions are available: Polecat, a cute allusion to the foul-smelling animal that marks its territory, a symptom and consequence of the operation in progress; and Little Pooper, to dream of dives or flying bombardments on not very nice imaginary people passing under our branch. Not for adults.
Guido Venturini
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