 CERAMIC TILES OF ITALY
The Milan Triennale. 16-21 April
Italian ceramics is back at the Triennale for the Furniture Exhibition 2008, after the Guscio project by Mario Botta and the designers who created last year’s sit_down_please. Ceramic Tiles of Italy_Architectural Food is the high profile show promoted by Confindustria Ceramica and organised by Edi.Cer. spa in a space designed by Aldo Colonetti with furnishings by Origoni & Steiner.
The event highlights two fundamental aspects of ceramic materials: industrial production, based on technical and aesthetic innovation, and the flexibility it gives to designers who have used off-the-shelf products to interpret the typically Italian subject matter of food. In all, there are eight solutions, all
very different, but with one element in common: hospitable and welcoming objects which creatively reinterpret the tradition of (mainly Italian) food. The works by Adriano Design, Enrico Azzimonti, Odoardo Fioravanti, Nicola Gallizia, Lorenzo Gecchelin, Luca Nichetto, Matteo Ragni and Maurizio Sala are of extraordinary interest, as are those of the ceramics companies participating in the event: Casalgrande Padana, Emilceramica, Etruria Design, Edilcuoghi Ceramiche, Florim, Majorca, Marazzi and Ragno. The project has also enjoyed the collaboration of Giacomo Mojoli, University of Gastronomical Sciences – Pollenzo (Slow Food), in choosing
typically local gastronomic products, which will be available to enjoy every evening from 19.00 to 20.00 at AperiTiles from 17 to 20 April. Food also has an architecture: ceramics, with its flexibility in installation, is able to provide new and original solutions for eating places. Ceramic Tiles of Italy, with its roots in Italian tradition, interprets new types of consumption, while maintaining its large series industrial dimension. To use a famous concept from the aesthetics of the last century, Italian ceramics is a sort of “work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility”, as Walter Benjamin described photography in his seminal essay from the Thirties. “Today we are working at the borders between industrial production and the need to design objects and forms which speak to the heart and mind of all of us – says Aldo Colonetti: Ceramic Tile of Italy – Architectural Food is a project aimed at marrying the industrial and traditional cultures of our country, while paying all due respect to the aesthetic dimension”.
The show will be presented to the press on 15 April 2008 at 13.00, in the presence of the President of Confindustria Ceramica, Alfonso Panzani, the show’s curator and the participating designers and companies.
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