In line with the distinctive curatorial approach of Maggiore g.a.m.-marked by refined dialogues between modern and contemporary art-the exhibition "The Encounter Between the Everyday and the Extraordinary" presents a refined juxtaposition between the timeless works of Giorgio Morandi and the hyperrealistic ceramic sculptures of Bertozzi & Casoni. Highlights include a major oil painting from the prestigious Francesco Arcangeli collection, an in-depth focus on his etchings-so essential to Morandi's oeuvre-as well as a selection of watercolours and drawings. These are placed in dialogue with Bertozzi & Casoni's ceramic sculptures inspired by Morandi's flower vases and conceived as true d'après Morandi pieces, originally created for the significant 2019 exhibition "Bertozzi & Casoni. In Praise of Artificial Flowers" at the Morandi Museum in Bologna.
For Giorgio Morandi, the representation of the everyday is expressed through a deliberate artistic focus on a small group of recurring subjects unified by a theme of simplicity: the celebrated still lifes with vases and bottles, the flower arrangements in vases, and the landscapes of his beloved Grizzana-a village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines where he spent his summers and built a house, personally choosing the placement of the windows to frame the distinctive views that would become his signature landscapes. These ordinary subjects were painted by the Maestro tirelessly and repeatedly throughout his life, in what can be seen as a form of meditation. It was precisely the ordinariness of these chosen subjects that allowed him to focus on and deepen the two fundamental pillars of his research: the composition of space-as an inner, contemplative place-and the depiction of the absence of time, understood as temporal suspension. In particular, the choice to depict silk or dried flowers reveals a conscious intention: to create a unity between the subject and time itself, rendering the representation infinite and immortal, abstracted from the flow of time and the transience of things. Because of their unchanging organic state, these flowers allowed Morandi to concentrate on tonal variations marked only by the dust that would slowly settle on the petals over time.
This Morandian lesson is taken up and reinterpreted by the contemporary artist duo Bertozzi & Casoni, who had their debut in our historic Bologna gallery in the early 1980s. In their tribute to Morandi, Bertozzi & Casoni elevate the flower vase as their subject of choice, giving life to hyperrealistic sculptures that reflect their profound interest in the natural world. Just as Morandi stopped time on canvas or paper, Bertozzi & Casoni suspend it in ceramic, rendering not only the flowers immutable, but also the small insects that inhabit them. Their works highlight the iconographic themes of vanitas and memento mori-long central to the artists' practice-provoking wonder and curiosity in the viewer, who is invited to pause and discover the hidden details in these sculptures, which transform the two-dimensional quality of Morandi's flowers into tangible, three- dimensional form.
With an invitation to the public to look more than once at these remarkable works, the everyday, in its Morandian essence, meets the extraordinary in ceramic form. The selected works engage in a dialogue that breaks down temporal boundaries, establishing a discourse not of progression, but one that transcends time itself.
