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Changing the World with a Flower Vase

by Roberto Costantino and others

At the crossing point of art, craftsmanship and design, the tradition of ceramics manufacturing meets suggestions by contemporary renowned artists and designers: as a result, 40 technically clever projects have been issued, rethinking the vase’s identity and employment and shifting its sense towards infinite possible directions.

The chosen subject “changing the world with a flower vase” is highly symbolic. From being an obsolete and relatively un-stimulating accessory, the vase is reconsidered in its role of  a container which receives and offers, a solid skin between an inside and an outside, a case that displays itself and its content.

For this reason, the 40 projects featured in this book are not meant to be a mere example of top craftsmanship nor objects and prototypes for a domestic landscape, but mainly living representations of an idea and ambassadors of a mind: the vision of vases provides the vision of the world. For their particular quality, as Andrea Branzi states, “nowadays, we can claim that the quality of a city no longer derives from its architecture, but from vases and flowers found inside it”.

These artists and designers will change the world with a flower vase: Simone Berti, Alessandro Biamonti, Andrea Branzi, Linde Burkhardt, Fernando e Humberto Campana, Lorenzo Damiani, Paolo Deganello, Florence Doléac, Marco Ferreri, Alberto Garutti, Alexis Georgacopoulos, Martí Guixé, Pekka Harni, Corrado Levi, Hugo Meert, Alessandro Mendini, Donata Paruccini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adrien Rovero, Denis Santachiara, Paolo Ulian, Vedovamazzei, Alberto Viola, Luca Vitone.

This book, curated by Roberto Costantino, includes texts by Alessandro Biamonti, Andrea Branzi, François Burkhardt, Roberto Costantino, Giuseppe Di Lella, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Beppe Finessi, Corrado Levi, Francesca Pasini, Luciano Pasquale, Chantal Prod’Hom.

The exhibition of the IV biennial of ceramics in contemporary art, curated by Roberto Costantino, will be on display at the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid (January – March 2010), the Pier Luigi and Natalina Remotti Foundation in Camogli - Genoa (July – November 2010) and the mudac - Museum of contemporary applied arts and design in Lausanne (June – September 2011).