The International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza has a long tradition of promoting Italian ceramic art around the world. Last year, two exhibitions were staged in Poland, in Boleslawiec and Warsaw, to mark International Made in Italy Day.
This year, two exhibitions in Latvia and Slovenia showcase Italian art and design from the last 50 years. The exhibition, curated by Claudia Casali, Valentins Petjko and Aivars Baranovskis, presents a dialogue between generations of Italian artists and designers who have chosen ceramics as their artistic medium. The title, “In the name of clay - The forms of matter”, suggests the poetic variety underlying the artists, highlighting their uniqueness and, at the same time, their common denominator: clay, approached from different perspectives, in keeping with the artistic expressions of the individual eras covered.
There is a cyclical nature to themes and a contemporary reinterpretation of them, in both art and design. Whilst, on the one hand, in the art section, we find artistic expressions, now-classic stylistic elements and their contemporary variations (informal art, Picassism, minimalism, hyperrealism, social and environmental critique, fragmentation and precariousness, reflection on tradition and its relevance today); on the other, the functionality of design looks to other canons, told through the lifestyles, starting with the anthropomorphic lines of Antonia Campi, passing through the exuberant 1980s of the Memphis group, to arrive at the essential narratives of the present day.
It is a journey across generations to showcase, through a necessary selection of artists and designers, the vitality of art and design in Italian ceramics—a constantly evolving journey that over the last two decades has found recognition, popularity and greater visibility within the contemporary art world.
It’s a significant and important Italian story.
The exhibition will open at the Decorative Art and Design Museum in Riga (branch of Latvian National Museum of Art) on May 29th, under the patronage of the Italian Embassy. In the autumn, it will move to the National Museum in Ljubljana, where it will remain until the new year.
A special music has been created by Don Antonio Gramentieri MATERIA — a suite, four pieces exploring a precise territory: the relationship between sound and matter, between geography and identity, between a concrete Romagna and an imagined elsewhere.
Guglielmo Maggini | In the Name of Clay, The forms of matter
