Bertozzi&Casoni. Tranche de vie

Bertozzi & Casoni have revolutionized the role of ceramics in contemporary art. With their astonishing creations they have established themselves as true Rule Breakers, disruptors of rules and traditions. Without ever betraying their proudly "artisanal" approach, they have put behind them many preconceptions and many self-imposed limits of artistic ceramics, setting new objectives for it and bringing it out of the confines of a somewhat marginal discipline to lead it to the upper levels of great art that matters.

With this exhibition, curated by Diego Galizzi director of Imola Musei, the city that has been the home of their creations for more than forty years wants to dedicate an important and fitting tribute to Bertozzi & Casoni, making its civic museums the theater of a a widespread exhibition event that celebrates their artistic genius and tells, almost as a witness, the path that led them to grow and establish themselves. The particular bond between the city and the artists, as well as the recent death of one of the two members of the artistic association, Stefano Dal Monte Casoni, make this exhibition event something special, with human as well as artistic and cultural implications.

The heart of the exhibition project – which is developed in three distinct sections, each in one of the Imola museums – takes place in the sumptuous halls of Palazzo Tozzoni (“Tranche de vie”). Here the works of Bertozzi & Casoni dialogue with the original environments and furnishings of the palace, in a path of evocation and re-actualization of the daily life of the Tozzoni counts through the surprising creative finds of the artistic duo. The propensity for amazement, the innate sense of irony and the language oriented towards a reckless and captivating mimesis find in this splendid setting a unique opportunity to launch into a wonderful game of exchange between reality and fiction. What is staged at Palazzo Tozzoni is not a traditional exhibition, rather a large choral installation oriented towards disorientation, a true "laboratory of doubt".

This area of the exhibition will be exceptionally open until April 1st.

“In a nutshell. 1980-1997”, the section set up in the quadriportico of the San Domenico Museum, is instead a journey entirely based on narration. An unprecedented exhibition, which for the first time wants to tell - in a certain sense - Bertozzi & Casoni before Bertozzi & Casoni, that is, before the development of that highly original and disruptive language which today unequivocally characterizes the Imola duo caused the eruption of their artistic proposal into something broader and universally recognized. Packed with around sixty pieces, the exhibition highlights the artists' research and expressive phases from the early 1980s until approximately the mid-1990s. The landing point of the exhibition is the turning point of the years 1997-98, which Bertozzi & Casoni reached with works that gradually became more monumental and open to new materials and more complex processes. An emblematic work of this transition to a new phase is “Choose Paradise” (1997), a scenographic work full of symbolic meanings that visitors can admire on the upper floor of the museum, in the permanent collections.

The third and final section is the scenographic installation “The Death of Eros” inside the south-east tower of the Rocca Sforzesca. On the occasion of the exhibition, one of Bertozzi & Casoni's longest and most troubled projects comes to fruition. Conceived already in 2000, the work has represented a real inventive and technical challenge for artists for years. Under the centuries-old brick vault, immersed in a bare and austere atmosphere, the suicide of Eros takes place, represented by the artists in the form of a faun, emblem of the erotic drive. A dramatic and impactful vision, further proof of one of the artists' most distinctive themes, that of memento mori.