La Ceramica Parallela

Saturday 6th of April 2019, for the Milan Art Week, ISIA Faenza Design & Communication opens the group exhibition The Parallel Ceramic at Galleria Fatto ad Arte, curated by the artist Salvatore Arancio and Marinella Paderni, director of the design academy ISIA Faenza. The show will end on April 14th, at the end of Milan Design Week 2019.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by The parallel botany, a book written in 1976 by the painter, writer and illustrator Leo Lionni as an essay on a non-existent science, a journey into the imaginary, which exposed a material entirely invented in the form of a plausible scientific manual.

The "parallel" nature of the show is revealed in the elements with biomorphic features constituting the columns that dominate the space: stems of coffee tables, 3D printed ceramics and then glazed with bright colors that, stacked one upon the other, give origin to totemic sculptures of metareal inspiration. A fantastic landscape, composed of organic forms that seem to come from Lionni's deceptive botanical essay, which instead are the fruit of the imagination and creativity of the eight master degrees’ students in Product Design of the ISIA Faenza, who participated in the workshop curated by Salvatore Arancio.

Reflecting the university teaching model of ISIA, the exhibition project pushes students to work beyond their own "comfort zone", combining the world of art with that of design, and designing sculptures that are also elements of furniture. "In this way" - underlines Salvatore Arancio - "a practical function is given to the sculptures, which at the same time are conceived as a kind of dystopic mutation of organic forms".

Alongside the totems, the original ceramic maquettes shaped by students and glazed in silver will be exhibited.

On one of the walls instead, a video animation, created by extrapolating elements from the 3D design process, reproduces an imaginary natural landscape, inhabited by organic forms that bring us to distant and dystopian worlds.

"2019 is an important year for ISIA Faenza, the diamond point in the university institutions that make up designers of the future - commented Giovanna Cassese, President of ISIA Faenza, - a year in which, among other things, ISIA opens its new Design Library "Bruno Munari" and is invited to the Salone Satellite in Milan. The workshop with Salvatore Arancio, a well-known artist on the international art scene, brings attention to the great possibilities of ceramics as a privileged material of the arts and design and marks the institution's new cultural policy in the recovery of its genius loci. The work represented for the master degree students the possibility of reopening the debate on the founding basis of the design discipline in all its fascinating complexity, rethinking the centrality of the laboratory as an eminent place of thought and research. And so a production of great originality, the result of experimentation and an ever-new dialogue between arts and technology, between creativity and reproducibility thanks to the new 3D technologies”.

“The work of an artist of considerable value inside the ISIA Faenza, such as Salvatore Arancio, has allowed our students to practice that model of training that, just a hundred years ago, founded the Bauhaus and that still today proves to be the most illuminating and effective in the development of future designers and Creative Cultural Industries.” - adds Marinella Paderni, Director of ISIA Faenza - "Ceramics has returned to the attention of artists and designers all over the world for its ability to combine ancient knowledge with technology research. This project shows the present and future possibilities. 3D ceramics is one of the most explored techniques in our institute today ".

A catalogue in Italian and English will show the whole project.

The exhibition is promoted in collaboration with WASP, technical sponsor and leading company in the 3D printing sector, with the institutions Ente Ceramica Faenza, Fondazione Banca del Monte and Cassa di Risparmio Faenza and Contamination Lab of Faenza.

ISIA Faenza Design & Communication is a leading university institution in the world of contemporary creativity and design that, since its foundation, has been operating in the field of high education design. Thanks also to the new governance of Giovanna Cassese and Marinella Paderni, it is developing an increasingly close dialogue between training, research, production and enhancement of design culture with a particular focus on the subject of ceramics.

Salvatore Arancio (1974) is born in Catania, he lives between Nice and London where he studied at Royal College of Art. Among his most recent exhibitions: Surreal Science: Loudon Collection with Salvatore Arancio, Whitechapel Gallery, Londra (2018); Biennale Ceramica – 60° Premio, Faenza, MIC, Faenza, (2018); Synthetic Landscape, Weston Park, Ludlow, UK (2017); Our generations of Italian ceramics and the Faenza Prize, Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, Icheon, Corea (2017); Tropical Hangover, Tenderpixel, Londra, (2017); Evolutionary Travels, Foundación Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Travelling Circular Labyrinths, Museo Civico di Castelbuono, Castelbuono, Palermo, (2016); Oh Mexico!, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur, Svizzera (2016); Teleonomy, Cafe Oto, Londra (2016); Fashioned to a Device Behind a Tree, Camden Arts Centre, Londra (2015); The London Open 2015, Whitechapel Gallery, Londra (2015); Une Taxonomie des Sens et des Formes, Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers, Vienne, Francia (2015); Project 09: Salvatore Arancio, Contemporary Art Society, Londra (2015); The First Humans, Pump House Gallery, Londra (2015); Birds, Cinéphémère, FIAC, Parigi, Francia (2014); The Hidden, Ensapc Ygrec, Parigi (2014); Cathedral, AV Festival, Northern Gallery For Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (2014).

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