francesco ardini

Jerome Zodo Contemporary is pleased to present into thespace 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 whichwe 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 everchanging 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 It is an ironic consideration of how outdated classical decoration of ceramic work can be, above all, in relationship to the exasperated pace of technological progress.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, theremains 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

special thanks-4DRAW – 3d design & animation
Studio BASE2 – interaction design