Just as in the banquet guests are accepted at the table and tastes mix and meet, the ceramic works of the artists also blend together by approaching each other stylistically. The clean and rigorous surfaces of MrCorto and LucaPi, the result of the elaboration of load-bearing lines in which they simplify objects, harmonize with the tentacles of Elisa D'Arienzo aka Little Freak.

 

Elisa's work, which refers to Palissy's majolica trompe l'oeil by subject affinity, is proposed as a light and polite invasion of surfaces and containers. The snake grips, used in ceramics since the Renaissance on vases and bowls, become marine tentacles in these works, drawing on the  territory of origin of the artist.

The sprawling element leaves behind any function of use, modulating the plastic movement, soft and independent because it is not associated with a body, as the vital force of the object.

All the work has an intense action exerted on the clay, an instinctive and controlled element at the same time.

 

The Equilibridi project was born from the choice of an element that establishes our being Italian: the moka, or coffee pot, which accompanies us from the first morning gesture of waking up to the proverbial hospitality that recalls the habit of offering guests a coffee.

 

The process envisaged the creation of one piece a day which resulted in nine works that create a single installation, with the addition, in an act of Duchampian citation, of the original element: the moka. The pieces are linear, in the mrCorto and LucaPi style, and take up the facets, planes, lines of force and secret sides of the object on which the tentacles are grafted. Each piece has an identity, a philosophy, and is part of a psychological path of revenge resulting from the release of the post-covid lockdown.

The tentacles act as a trade union with the geometric shapes, softening the lines, caressing the hard edges, giving a lively, instinctive part to the rigor of the geometric shapes. Collaborations are always challenging. Contaminating was not easy, without affecting the artistic research of each and at the same time welcoming a completely different style, without removing the balance from the forms, maintaining their own peculiarities. Even technically, uniting the two different lands used by the artists was another way of experimenting in the work. This residence is an elegant example of a meeting between forms, thoughts and matter.

 

The project was created with nine pieces, of different shapes, which represent the stages of the transformation process that the artists felt necessary after the period of forced closure due to Covid. This feeling, widespread for many artists throughout Italy, has been discussed and elaborated through this series. 

Origin - acceptance - transition - strength - time - reunion - unification - connections - projection - soul. 

A journey of matter, a journey of the soul, seen through the sensitivity of the artists, carried out in the forms, poured onto an object finally re-transformed and elevated to a symbol.

 

Mara DeFanti