VASSOIO CON PAGINA | BERTOZZI & CASONI

Through their artistic practice Bertozzi & Casoni give shape to sculptures capable of challenging visual perception. Vassoio con pagina (2022) is a representative example, a scene of everyday life reproduced with extraordinary skill.

Bertozzi & Casoni’s practice involves experimentation through sculptural technique, preferring painted ceramics as their main material, and in the pursuit of an objective representation of depicted subjects as realistically as possible.
This artwork reproduces a tray filled with discards: broken eggshells, dirty spoons and coffee cups, crumpled newspaper sheets, as if a waiter had just cleared a table of breakfast remnants and stacked everything on a tray, in a precarious balance.
What makes the artwork of these two artists effective in its illusion is the meticulous perfection with which each element is crafted: in Vassoio con pagina every eggshell appears to have just been cracked, each dirty spoon demands an immediate wash, and the newspaper sheets exude such authenticity that they seem to have just been torn from the local daily. Actions that each of us might have performed, in whole or in part, in our morning routines.

An interesting contrast is created between the care in the crafting process, with an almost obsessive attention to detail despite the challenging material, and the choice of subjects. What may seem insignificant becomes an object of attention: what is perishable and in decay – discards and waste – becomes a symbolic way of representing the human condition nowadays, through a direct association with everyday life.
The intrinsic fragility of ceramics is skillfully masked and doesn’t impact the structural composition, rather, it strengthens it, opening an abstract dialogue about contradictions, which also encompasses the concept of still life, of which this artwork is a contemporary reinterpretation.

Bertozzi & Casoni challenge the limits of technique and representation to make the viewer doubt what appears to be original and identify what is mere reproduction, contributing to one of the most debated discussions of the Twenties in the art world.

Bertozzi & Casoni
Vassoio con pagina, 2022
Polychrome ceramic, cm h 15x44x37, photo by Nazario Spadoni. Courtesy the artists.

11/10/2023