The 14th edition of the Pino Pascali Prize opened in Polignano a Mare (Bari) Saturday 29th of October 2011 at 7 pm.
The exhibition, curated by Carlo Berardi and Jason Lee, shows works from 1999 to 2011. A common theme shared by the exhibited works is the homage to the simulation of everyday activities, the representation of waste, urban waste and man-made destruction of nature. These are the basic elements of the poetic language adopted by the two famous artists.
Bertozzi & Casoni lead viewers to the realm of hyperrealism, where everything is fake, a Disney world which is, however, cruel and void of anything fantastic. Men’s surroundings are just a pile of their own waste. We also find intellectual quotations, as well as ceramic reproductions of famous objects of Italian design. The representation of rubbish laying on the fake coffee table, as well as its perfect copy in the same dimensions of the original, is also very charming. In addition, the viewer is left gobsmacked by the surreal and poetic reproduction of Madonna scheletrita (Skeletal Madonna), an industrial-strength mower in polychrome ceramic.
In the exhibition we also find a big petrol barrel entitled Bambi. On top of the barrel we find the sweet deer who has found his home there, among the scraps of civilization.
Daily routine is overturned like in an hourglass: on one side we have our polished life, a perfect and glossy world, on the other side we are swamped with rubbish, waste, the most obvious of manmade products.
The contrast between the aesthetic of beauty and ugliness strongly imposes itself.
These are strong and uneasy sculptures that play around current themes and which are realised using the ancient techniques of ceramic making, revisited with personal and incredible experiments which strengthen the typical philosophical categories of artifice and mimesis from which Bertozzi & Casoni get their inspiration.