Opening: Wednesday 16 April
From 16 April to 3 July 2014, Sperone Westwater, Lugano, will host the exhibition “Bertozzi & Casoni. Appunti recenti (contrappunti)” presenting eleven glazed ceramic sculptures executed between 2002 and 2014.

Bertozzi & Casoni, heirs of the Italian tradition of polychrome sculpture, create objects reflecting all that is short-lived, perishable and decaying, internationally acknowledged icons of the human condition. The biting irony of their works is always counterbalanced by technical perfection. Between destabilizing compositions and formal hyperrealism, Bertozzi & Casoni study contemporary society’s rubbish, including that of its culture. The themes of vanitas and memento mori, traditional subjects of art history through the ages, are manifest in a contemporary form that paradoxically attracts through fantastic imagery.

Giampaolo Bertozzi, born in Borgo Tossignano in 1957, and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni, born in Lugo di Romagna in 1961, met while studying at the Gaetano Ballardini Ceramic Art Institute of Faenza, Italy. In 1980, they founded a ceramics production company called “Bertozzi & Casoni s.n.c.,” thereby inserting themselves into the tradition of workshops. In the 1980s, they created their first ceramic sculptures and in the 1990s, they increased their technical expertise and they started collaborations with renowned Italian and European artists. They adopted a more conceptual and radical approach which, towards the end of the ‘90s, led to large-scale work. Bertozzi & Casoni abandoned the use of majolica after 2000 in favour of industrial ceramic materials, in a kind of renewed epic of trash. These increased the hypnotic power of their now technically perfect works, well beyond the already exceptional results previously achieved.

Bertozzi & Casoni exhibited at the Tate Liverpool (2004), at the Quadriennale in Rome (2005), at the Galleria Cardi in Milan (2001-2007), at the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York (2005, 2010), at Ca 'Pesaro in Venice (2007), at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan (2008), at the Venice Biennale (2009 and 2011) and at the FaMa Gallery in Verona (2011). Recent solo exhibitions took place in 2012 in London at All Visual Art and in 2013 at the Museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague, at Beck & Eggeling in Düsseldorf, and at the Galleria Cardi in Pietrasanta.

A catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition. There will be a reception for the artists on Wednesday, 16 April, 6-8 pm.

Sperone Westwater
Via Nassa 42
6900 Lugano – Switzerland
T +41919210879
galleriasperonelugano@gmail.com
Tue – Sat: 2 – 6 pm