Circe

Milano, 10/04 – 1/06, 2013

Jerome Zodo Contemporary is pleased to present into the space of the Project Room CIRCE a site specific project by Francesco Ardini, a ceramic creations and and enchantmentin increased reality, curated by Alessandro Turci.

We are trapped between the virtual and reality in a technological enchantment that, like the spell cast by Circe, transforms us into what we really are. The domestic environment represented by furnishings in white ceramic reminds us of our provenance from a reassuring known world in which we live and interact. We are not in the presence of metaphors or symbols but common objects consumed by a bulimic obsession, with the same maniacal ease with which we appropriate their image. Tablets and i-phones are our present-day technological prosthetics, they amplify our perception via a portal of infinite information and possibility.

The white plate “Incanto” (Enchantment) hanging on the wall, does not really have any decorations but virtual and ever-changing combinations that the user composes with colourful flowers and butterflies visible in a phantasmagorical vortex through the tablet. It is an ironic consideration of how outdated classical decoration of ceramic work can be, above all, in relationship to the exasperated pace of technological progress. “Offerta” (Offering) is just as sacred a tribute as that offered to Circe: a pure white blaze of fruit and i-phones, also linked to the food that gives us nourishment, resting on a tablet in golden ceramic like a votive tray.

Three hundred plates are at the centre of the “Convivio” (Banquet), where Circe delighted in her works of sorcery changing her guests into various animals depending on their nature. Here, the remains of the banquet are randomly heaped, witness to just as many mutations, heirs to a decadent fascination, by now abandoned to a viral and virtual mutation that leaves no other path than that of a new and rethought interpretation. Resting or suspended between two ambiguous realities, the viral proliferations light up threateningly of synthetic blue as do some animal or plant species in nature to foresee danger and at the same time the fatal evident attraction.

Statically positioned in the theca of “Megaron” as verifiable phases of a natural and inevitable process between the uncontaminated purity of the white objects up to their decomposing and being utterly overwhelmed. The fulcrum of the phenomenon, determining focus of stability, is without any further multimedia possibilities, motionless it rises like a simulacrum of the change that has taken place. Protected by a theca just like a find of archaeology of art, it is open to being examined in detail and to an attentive consideration that will be able to provoke interest and respect in a painful, as much as inevitable, metamorphosis.

Francesco Ardini, was born in Padua on the 19th of November 1986. Now he lives and works between Padua and Nove (VI).

He has a degree in Architecture with a speciality in Architecture of Landscape in 2011 from the IUAV in Venice. During his years of study at university, he discovered ceramics and self-taught began research that has called into question the plastic aspect of the material following a fine sense of lightness. Ardini’s works of art, in his work as a potter, are decidedly conceptual. The irregular surfaces, the obvious dissolution, the linearity threatened by cracks results in a naturalism of biological circles in which the dissolution always ensues the formal definition: to the shadow of natural laws no longer absolute but relative, in a world in which everything is conditioned and precarious.

In 2012, he won the MACEF DESIGN AWARD 2012 and participated in various cultural projects: XIII Ex Tempore Ceramica Contemporanea, Pirano; Project Network / Guldagergaard – International Ceramic Research Center; Costruire Cultura – Nuovi Segnali, Padua; Up Designer Selection, Florence; 8° International Contemporary Ceramics Arts, Albissola; STICCIANO 2012 – group show of ceramic arts. In 2011 and 2010, he participated in the Premio Aldo Ajo’, Gubbio and in Le Arti Della Ceramica, Segno E Racconto, Padua. In 2009, he participated in the exhibition at the Museo Della Ceramica/Palazzo Sturm, Bassano.