Terre a fuoco

To celebrate its fifty years in business in 2010, Casalgrande Padana, a major company in the ceramic industry, commissioned the three leading photographers Franco Fontana, Michael Kenna and Ferdinando Scianna to revisit and document creatively various stages of the journey that starts from the extraction of raw materials in a cave or the gathering of pebbles on a beach and, primarily through the action of firing, culminates in the production of a tile, which will then go on to inhabit every corner of the world. The results of their work, documented in the volume published by Skira and edited by Sandro Parmiggiani, are presented at this exhibit by Fotografia Europea 2011. The sixty images on display (twenty from each of the photographers) confirm how misleading and “ideological” certain argumentations on the commissioning of artworks can be when they state that commissioning deprives artists of creative freedom and stifles their inventiveness. The images produced by the three photographers demonstrate how empty these claims are: those of Michael Kenna (born in Widnes, England, in 1953), taken in some of Europe’s quarries where the materials are extracted  for the manufacturing of tiles, which going through ports like Ravenna, eventually reach the facilities of Casalgrande Padana, where they acquire the form of a ceramic product; those of Ferdinando Scianna (born in Bagheria, in 1943), taken inside the main manufacturing plant, in the surrounding yards overflowing with tiles ready to take off on their journey around the world, and finally in the offices, revealing the identity of the individuals who make the company thrive and are its vital hub; and those of Franco Fontana (born in Modena, in 1933) taken in the meanders of the plant, pursuing flashes of colour and subtle, recurring geometric features that seem to pervade everything. The “constraint” which all three photographers have had to reckon with, has made them give their best and boost the characteristics of their own language (Kenna, Scianna) or innovate them (Fontana’s images are striking for the freshness of his perspective, pure and ready to capture the new which he comes across). The experience of the three photographers ultimately seems to confirm Ferdinando Scianna's recent comment during a conversation with Giuseppe Tornatore, when he said that “When you're working for a client, you often find something that suits you much more than what you'd be able to find if you were working for yourself.”
To celebrate its fifty years in business, Casalgrande Padana commissioned Kengo Kuma, one of the most innovative exponents of contemporary architecture, to design a large-scale installation for the roundabout outside the entrance of the main plant, as a new symbolic gateway to Emilia's ceramic district. In his architectural design, Kuma (born in Kanagawa, Japan, in 1954) is renowned for spearheading principles of anti-dimension and anti-volume, which in this particular work commissioned by Casalgrande Padana, he is able to combine with principles of time, movement and sequential perception determined by approaching the roundabout by car from the main road. This unusual sculpture, made of large, white, glazed stoneware tiles, denies that the tile is useful merely as a covering material and exalts its role as the linchpin of a structure in which filled and empty spaces alternate in “musical” sequences, constantly interacting with the surrounding environment and the changing weather conditions. The 45 metre-long structure rises out of the water in the centre of the roundabout, and as you approach and circle around it, it first conveys the idea of a wall cutting through space and then gradually reveals its complexity. It is a constantly evolving form, in a sort of process of metamorphosis, like the clouds in the sky on a windy day – and it is not by chance that Kuma has named the work “Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud”.Stanislao Farri (born in Bibbiano, Reggio Emilia, in 1924) has approached this sculpture, looked at it from every perspective and at every hour of the day, when the light was gradually revealing new profiles and iridescent features, and thanks to, among other things, his remarkable skill in working in the darkroom, has captured the most intimate and rigorous geometric forms and the most original formal aspects in which space has been harmoniously segmented, making a precious contribution to revealing and interpreting the secret essence of Kuma's work. This section of the exhibit presents twenty images by the doyen of Reggio Emilia's photography, collected in a volume edited by Sandro Parmiggiani, published for the occasion by Casalgrande Padana.
 

Stanislao Farri was born in Bibbiano (Reggio Emilia) in 1924. In the post-war years he was one of the founder members of the Cooperativa Operai Tipografi (Printing workers cooperative) and has been a professional photographer since 1955. His special field is industrial and advertising photography and the reproduction of art and architecture works. Since the late Sixties he has been engaged in a study of rural civilization in the area of the Province of Reggio Emilia stretching between the Apennines and the Po river. His photographs are held at the Panizzi Library of Reggio Emilia and at the Study Centre and Communication Archive of Parma University, which dedicated an important monograph to him in 1986 edited by Massimo Mussini.

Franco Fontana was born in Modena in 1933. His works are held at some of the world’s leading museums. He has over 450 solo and group exhibits to his name. A colour “diviner”, Fontana first tackled rural and urban landscapes and then went on to other fields, consistently showing an immediate, instinctive sensibility for every manifestation of colour and geometries.
He received the 28th Ragno D’Oro-UNESCO Award for Art in 1994 and an Honorary Degree in Eco-Compatible Product Design from the Politecnico di Torino in 2006.
 
Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, Lancashire, England, in 1953. After long dreaming of devoting himself to painting, he started studying photography. In the autumn of 1975, the exhibit The Land, curated by Bill Brandt for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, revealed to him the extraordinary possibilities of artistic photography, particularly through those landscapes that were the product of a perspective more closely associated with feelings than with the need to describe a particular place. In the late seventies, Kenna moved to the United States and settled in San Francisco, thereafter he moved first to Portland and then to Seattle, where he is currently living. Since then, he has devoted great efforts to his chosen theme - the landscape - working tirelessly on a reconnaissance of the infinite faces of the planet, even the most secret ones, eventually touching on all the continents. The products of his numerous journeys are documented in several monographs and in the catalogues of the many exhibits dedicated to him, the last being the anthology held in May 2010 at Palazzo Magnani in Reggio Emilia.

Ferdinando Scianna is Sicilian (from Bagheria) and is one of Italy’s most internationally renowned photographers. He started taking photographs in the Sixties, during which time he met the writer Leonardo Sciascia with whom he forged an extremely important friendship. During this time he systematically photographed Sicily, its people and its festivals. The year 1965 saw the publication of his book “Feste religiose in Sicilia” (Religious festivals in Sicily), with an essay by Leonardo Sciascia, which won the Nadar award. In 1966 he moved to Milan where he worked for l’Europeo magazine as a photo reporter and later as its correspondent in Paris where he lived for ten years. In 1977 he published “Les Siciliens” (The Sicilians) in France and “Villa dei mostri” (Villa of monsters) in Italy. He met Henri Cartier-Bresson and in 1982 became a member of Magnum. From 1987 he worked as a photo reporter as well as a fashion photographer. His books include “Kami” (Milan – Palermo 1988), “Le forme del caos” (The forms of chaos) (Udine, 1989), “Marpessa” (Milan, 1993), “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream” (London, 1997) and “Quelli di Bagheria” (Those from Bagheria) (Lugano, 2002), “La geometria e la passione” (Geometry and passion) (Rome, 2008), through to the recent publication, in collaboration with film-maker Giuseppe Tornatore, of “Baaria Bagheria” (Rome, 2009).