MODULI, PENSIERI E IMMAGINI

On 22 May, SRT presents the project “Modules, Thoughts and Images. Ceroli 74–Zoboli 24” at its gallery at Via FBF 34.

“Thoughts, Images of Daria”, a work by Mario Ceroli from 1974 that has never previously been included in an exhibition project, provides both the title and the starting point for the show, where it will finally be presented to the public alongside a work by Francesca Zoboli, “Tra-vasi”, 2024.

Rather than a static exhibition, this is a dynamic project of investigation and research. Opening on 22 May, the exhibition-project reflects, in an emblematic way, the approach that has driven SRT for more than 20 years.

A design gallery with a focus on the past and an incubator for contemporary design. This dual identity, consolidated over time, provides the expertise and capacity for critical analysis needed to generate wide-ranging actions and reflections.

The 25 panels of unfinished pine that make up “Thoughts and Images of Daria”, bearing the master’s abstract geometries, were originally conceived as the basis for an editorial project. Photographed in 25 black-and-white images and presented alongside 25 graphic works by Giuseppe Chiari, they formed the body of the eponymous art volume published in 1974 by Gianpaolo Prearo Editore.

Following publication, the panels were installed as wall cladding in the home of a Milanese collector, with a site-specific contextualisation conceived directly by the artist.

First a “support” for an editorial experience, then organically integrated into an architectural project, the work seems to give tangible form to an idea that gradually emerged within Ceroli’s practice: that art must be taken off the nail on the wall and allowed, in various forms, to enter real life.

This idea was taken up by Antonio and Jacopo, founders of the Milanese space, as a way of undertaking “an investigation, often considered dangerous and therefore avoided, into the porous boundaries between art, applied art and interior architecture”.

They passed the baton to Francesca Zoboli, whose long-standing practice in the applied arts followed her academic training at Brera and who shares with Spazio RT a commitment to continuous research and constant experimentation.

From this came “Tra-vasi”, a ceramic installation in which Zoboli experiments, reworks and reflects, on a monumental scale, upon a graphic theme familiar to her. Working with this material for the first time, she has shaped an ambivalent object in which, as in Ceroli’s work, everything perhaps comes together.

Four panels arranged in a vertical sequence form a single monumental column almost three metres high, in which her distinctive mark-making and palette burst forth in a play of composition and decomposition that reverberates through the surrounding space. Once again, the starting point is the vase: a primordial geometry, an archetype and the origin of every moulded form.

This is an investigation particularly dear to Francesca Zoboli, who had already distilled her reflections on the subject in the book “Travasi”, published by La Grande Illusion (Pavia, 2021).

Ceroli and Zoboli: inverse yet parallel paths. From convention to the originality of a complex and multifaceted experience. From an artefact of applied art to an expression freed from functional constraints. Fixed modules that bend to different intentions. A syntax that remains unchanged even as its meaning shifts.