Programme - Double game - The new mosaic of the Ravenna Fine Arts Academy
Exhibition
Location: Santa Maria delle Croci
Opening Hour: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 4.00p.m. 6.00p.m.
From 10 October to 20 November 2009
With the exhibition entitled “Doppio gioco” the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna is participating in RavennaMosaico, presenting the most recent visual research of its young artists.
What is new today in the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna?
Mosaic is the adventure that on the multi-media horizon of contemporary art plays a double game. The hand and the mind are accomplices and the results seem unforeseeable and fascinating.
The old tradition of Ravenna is cultivated with great enthusiasm and feeling and bears fruit of great aesthetic quality, especially when the imagination and design open themselves to new contexts (the object, the urban space, the beauty of a jewel).
At the same time and in the same workshops, ideas of “breaking away” are formed that, through other concepts and designs, deny that extraordinary technique and experiment with new materials, original methods of working, far from traditional rules and schemes.
A highly coloured obelisk of plastic straws, the flags of nations consisting of cartridges of firearms, the gigantic carrot created as an ironic artifice but made with murrhines that recreate the vegetable texture found in nature, the fragments of a windshield transformed into materials of a magic exercise in composition.
Right there alongside, the lacelike mosaics produced following the golden rules applied by ancient masters at San Vitale and Galla Placidia, or the refined execution of small altar-pieces that recall the tones and passing of the seasons. There is the magic of gold, of an ancient and new “sign” which surprises us as it glister gives life to a tower of the ancient city walls. The project selected comes from the course of Urban Design held by the architect Troisi (MTA, Milano, the study which has produced in Ravenna, the beautiful ‘Polo Lama Sud’ project) in cooperation with Alessandra Andrini.
Mosaic can also be used in the art of the goldsmith – at the Fine Arts Academy there has been a goldsmith’s workshop for many years, the only one in the Fine Arts Academies of Italy - with the technique, not of Ravenna, of “mosaico filato” by which original beautiful works rich in colours and materials are created and can be seen on display.
That is not all however. Special projects and cooperative efforts make the game more than a ‘double game’.
The masterful mosaic transposition of the cartoon by Eugenio Carmi which will be placed in the permanent collection of the museum will be done by the students of the Fine Arts Academy, under the guidance of Prof. Daniele Strada (presentation of the work: Saturday 24 October). Eugenio Carmi – born in Genoa in 1920, now living and working in Milan and former student of Casorati - is a refined exponent of Italian abstractionism; during the nineteen seventies he taught at the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna.
The great mosaic destined for the city of Santo Spirito (Cuba) entitled “La Poderosa” of the student Matylda Tracewska, winner of the competition held by the Italy-Cuba Association, accepts this challenge of great dimensions (measuring two metres by ten) and the “murales” effect. It will be presented in the garden of the Fine Arts Academy on Friday 9 October with a cheery Cuban glass-raising toast before leaving Italy.
The young company, Aquileia mosaics, belonging to Industrie Fincuoghi Spa which operates in the field of mosaic production in glazed stoneware, has assigned study grants to two students of the Academy to reward them for their creativity: the motives they produce will be used in the next production of the company. It is a recognition that joins with the new cooperative effort in progress aimed at artistic experimentation of materials produced by the company.
The prize giving, with the presentation of the projects of the young artists selected, will take place during the opening of the exhibition at Santa Maria delle Croci on Saturday 10 October.
Organised by: Maria Rita Bentini, Dusciana Bravura, Sabina Ghinassi, Felice Nittolo, Leonardo Pivi and Daniele Strada.
