To be one. Fabrics and ceramics by Alessandro Teoldi, exhibition view, Savona, 2024, Ph. Jorge Felix Diaz Urquiza
On the occasion of the city of Savona's candidacy as Italian Capital of Culture 2027, the Savona Ceramics Museum Foundation, from 22 March to 19 July 2024, will host two exhibitions that are linked by theme and technique. Arturo Martini opens to the public The plot of dreams. Fabrics, ceramics, paintings , an exhibition project promoted by the Lino Benzoni association and the Savona Ceramics Museum Foundation, curated by Carla Bracco , with the collaboration of Magda Tassinari and Donatella Ventura. At the same time, in the same spaces, the exhibition ESSERE UNO. Fabrics and ceramics by Alessandro Teoldi , edited by Luca Bochicchio and Daniele Panucci. Everything becomes a material journey, a constant dialogue between the works and the two authors who link their artistic production with the ceramics of Savona, the artisan workshops of Albissola and the textile manufacturing. Fabrics, sculptures and dreams mix with identity, the identity of a territory that focuses on its historical past, personalities in transit and new contaminations.
......
The contemporary works of Alessandro Teoldi are compared to Martini's works. The title "Essere Uno" talks about intimacy, being alone and polymorphous. The material connection between the two exhibitions is evident, even in the latter the textile and terracotta works invade the space, fill it and arrange it. But are they really in dialogue with Martini's works? Teoldi tells of a dream of identity, in which the being gets lost, mixes and disperses. Other works are shown, which escape the visual narrative and throw themselves into the expressive one.
The small terracotta works tell of intimate moments, solitude and subsistence. With monumental shapes but small in size, they show men kissing, subjects folded in on themselves, lying down, put aside and isolated. We show glimpses of life, of past time that are mixed with memories.
The textile works, however, become a mix of experiences, a place where other bodies are sewn and judgments are suspended. Bodies upon bodies merge and the colors of paintings without paint, of textile collages, become something else and multiply the meanings. There is a work, Talking in bed (2022), which shows those meanings, reveals them and underlines the silences. If in Martini the dream seems to be central, here there is the subtraction of the dream, an escape from the ephemeral where everything becomes concrete, close to us, extremely tangible.
ESSERE UNO and The plot of dreams are more than two exhibitions in dialogue, they are two intimate moments that juxtapose and highlight discrepancies. Both exhibitions appear suspended in space and time, divided by poetics and thematics; however, they remain in a constant technical and formal dialogue where matter is their point of junction.
