On Saturday 25 March 2023 from 18: 30 at the Pallavicini22 Art Gallery exhibition space in Viale Giorgio Pallavicini 22 in Ravenna, the inauguration of “primitive intimate collective - PRIMITIVO PAGANO INTIMO”, a personal exhibition by Francesca Casadei which will remain on display until Sunday 2 April and will be open to the public from Tuesday to Sunday from 16: 00 to 19: 00.The catalog of the exhibition, curated by Roberto Pagnani, contains an interview by Sebastiano Bacchi with the artist. The exhibition, promoted and organized by CARP Association of Social Promotion in collaboration with the PALLAVICINI 22 Art Gallery Exhibition Space and with the Ghigi-Pagnani Collection Archive, is sponsored by the Municipality of Ravenna Department of Culture, the Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna and by the Port System Authority of the central-northern Adriatic Sea. The exhibition
The exhibition, which illustrates Francesca Casadei's artistic career, is a selection of her most significant ceramic works. The installation consists of two cubes, nine spheres, six masks and three monsters in an exhibition itinerary that respects the chronological order of creation. The cubes and spheres appear with cracks, fissures, seams, scars, movements, scrapes, cuts, wounds, ripples and scales; a sphere appears exploded. The works are both black and white and colored with vivid and shiny chromaticities. They can be seen as screen-shots or freeze-frames of a metamorphosis that is still in its initial state. In a society founded on information, communication and image where everything is apparently known and visible, Francesca Casadei's works refer to the culture of an invisible world and to the ancient apotropaic magic, with the creation of demonic masks, both to hang and to use in any rituals. Finally we meet the monsters, shapeless, deformed and primordial, who are looking for a still very distant harmony. Surely they are the four tangible elements that contribute to the creation of the works, but it is in the fifth element, the ether, that the true strength of the artist is born. Only in that invisible quintessence can the presence of the demonic or the divine be rediscovered. The Artist
Francesca Casadei was born in Ravenna on 1 September 1991 and grew up in the countryside, in the Ravenna area. She has been passionate about art since childhood, she attends the artistic high school with a sculptural address. Subsequently she attended ceramic courses and workshops. She produces her own works by experimenting with different sculptural, ceramic and pictorial techniques in a self-taught way. At the same time, she maintains constant contact with various potters and local artists who allow her to observe and increase her own vision with respect to the world of classical and contemporary ceramics. Her search has its roots in the relationship between man and nature and in the connection between contrasts: internal and external, social and intimate, nature and artifice, demonic and divine; she reflects on the environment in a broad sense, attempting to investigate the physical and psychological/emotional modalities and results in which living beings, social systems, artifacts and technologies influence each other. The intent is to express the harmonious or conflicting ties that generate, regenerate and innovate life. Francesca Casadei researches shapes, interventions in matter and the study of color mainly in the ceramic field. The artist considers the processing of clay, minerals and oxides necessary for its decoration, a strongly alchemical discipline and anciently linked to man and prefers it in her artistic expression.