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The work is composed of 153 cement tiles, created under Piermattei’s guidance by over 150 young people (ages 15–18) from the Fabriano area, participants in Future Campus Fabriano — an educational program promoted by the Fabriano Territorial Committee of Confindustria Ancona, aimed at helping young people discover the region and its businesses, identify their talents, and navigate their future.

The project acts as a bridge between past and present, heritage and innovation, leaving a tangible trace of the educational experience lived by the students, and bearing witness to the deep connection between culture, entrepreneurship, and creativity that defines the Fabriano region.

INFO
Fabriano Industry
c/o BPER Banca, Piazza Giambattista Miliani 16, Fabriano
Tel. +39 071 29048279
Opening event: Wednesday, July 16 – 5:00 PM
Special opening: July 17–23, from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Regular hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00 AM–1:00 PM / 4:00 PM–7:00 PM

“Inhalatorium” is a large-scale sculptural installation made of heterogeneous materials, designed and created together with the company’s employees, in line with the mission of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, which has promoted dialogue between art and business since its establishment.

“Poniatowski’s project for the Elica Group Polska community — explains Marcello Smarrelli, Artistic Director of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli — is grounded in a core conviction central to the Foundation’s mission: to harness contemporary art as an educational and methodological tool capable of enhancing the workplace environment and sparking innovative processes. Inhalatorium is not merely an object to be contemplated, but a device that redefines the company’s social dimension, strengthening the sense of belonging and connection among its people. Over the years, we have carried out similar interventions in other Elica facilities and within other major multinational corporations, activating art as a catalyst for dialogue, exchange, and reflection. This new installation fully embraces and advances this trajectory, reinforcing Elica’s international vision and its unique approach to promoting art and its transformative potential for the benefit of the communities involved.” 

Read the press release.

In his artistic practice, Cezary Poniatowski transforms everyday objects and materials into sculptural compositions. Drawing inspiration from the histories, emotions, and memories linked to material culture, he creates works that feel both familiar and unsettling. “Poniatowski’s research reflects the ways perception shapes meaning—how we recognize familiar forms in abstract compositions and how materials tied to domestic or utilitarian functions carry cultural and emotional significance. This approach positions him among the most compelling voices in sculpture and spatial practice in Central Europe today” – affirms Jakub Gawkowski, co-curator of this edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli.

In the words of Marcello Smarrelli, Artistic Director of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, “The Premio Ermanno Casoli has always aimed to foster dialogue between art and business, using the universal language of art to inspire new perspectives and ways of thinking. We do this across all the countries where Elica operates, promoting its values globally and reinforcing the deep connection between creativity and innovation. Thanks to his artistic practice, which explores crucial issues such as the human condition and its relationship with technology and the environment, we are confident that Cezary Poniatowski’s contribution will have a profound and lasting impact on the company and its employees.”

Following this approach, Cezary Poniatowski has been invited to conceive a site-specific project for the Elica Group Polska plant. As is typical of the Premio Ermanno Casoli, employees will be directly involved in the creation of a permanent artwork. Poniatowski’s intervention will explore breath and inhalation—both as physiological processes and as metaphors for circulation, flow, and transformation. Engaging with Elica’s advanced technologies that regulate and enhance air saturation, the project will link those processes to the broader metabolic exchanges within individual and collective bodies.

The work will be inaugurated in June 2025 at the Elica Group Polska plant in Jelcz-Laskowice, Poland.

Read the press release.

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The project, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, promoted by the Municipality of Fabriano and conceived in collaboration with Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, is supported by PAC2022-2023 – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. 

Born in Turin (1936), Paolo Icaro is a key figure in the artistic researches of the 1960s. Closely connected to the Arte Povera movement, since the beginning he has experimented with the evolving nature of sculptural action in relation to form and space, using elemental and flexible materials such as concrete, clay, paper, wood, and plaster.  

Artificio naturale, created in 2011, perfectly reflects this ongoing research and experimentation. The installation consists of five stone boulders, simply laid on the ground. The sculptor first modeled an “ideal” stone in clay, smoothing it to resemble a perfect pebble, as if it had been shaped by the waters of a stream. From this original form, five plaster casts were created, then cast in cement, and finally, thanks to 3D scanning, sculpted in Matraia stone, a gray-blue material of exceptional compactness and durability. Although identical in shape, the five boulders appear different as they are placed in five unique positions where they achieve balance.

The project is accompanied by a series of public talks, educational workshops for children, and a book published by Chimera Editore, with texts by Marcello Smarrelli and Simone Ciglia.

INFO AND BOOKING:
0732.250658 | pinacoteca.molajoli@comune.fabriano.an.it

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Can you please introduce yourself and the story of we+?
we+ is a contemporary design studio founded in 2013 in Tokyo by Toshiya Hayashi and Hokuto Ando. Our mission is to create new perspectives and values through research and experimentation. Our projects stem from constant research both in Japan and abroad. Thanks to these experiences, we’ve had the privilege of collaborating with various companies and organizations, contributing to research and development projects, commissioned installations, branding, product ideation, spatial design, and art direction.

What distinguishes your daily work?
We value research and experimentation. We integrate logical thinking, such as analyzing the client’s history and social context, with a hands-on approach to fieldwork and material experimentation. Our goal is to explore new expressions and possibilities to achieve alternative designs.

Can you explain more about “Straordinaria”, the installation that you are exhibiting at Fuori Salone at Palazzo Litta?
“Straordinaria” is inspired by the delicate formation of ‘clouds’ caused by the collision of warm and cold air. The installation consists of countless translucent mesh fabric cylinders suspended from above, creating an ethereal flow of subtle shades in space. These cylinders, slightly colored in some sections, evoke sensations of ‘air’ and ‘heat.’ The experience will be akin to strolling through the clouds, inviting viewers to harmoniously merge with the surrounding environment and immerse themselves in the elegant interaction of ‘air’ and ‘heat,’ discovering a world of unique sensations.

How will the public be engaged in the installation?
This installation offers the public an engaging experience where colors surprisingly change depending on the viewing angle, location, and distance to the artwork. By altering these factors, viewers can appreciate a variety of expressions. Stepping into the pathway within the installation, surrounded by the artwork from all directions, will be like taking a walk through a vibrant cloud of colors.

What do you expect from this experience in Milan with Elica and Fondazione Ermano Casoli?
Through the immersive experience we’ve created, we aim for the rebranded concept of Elica to intuitively resonate with visitors. Furthermore, we are delighted that this collaboration serves as an opportunity to deepen our relationship with Fondazione Ermano Casoli too. 

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Elica, a key player in kitchens worldwide for over 50 years, in collaboration with Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, – which has been promoting exchange between contemporary art and businesses since its establishment -, presents Straordinaria, a poetic site-specific installation envisaged by the experimental Japanese design studio ‘we+’, founded by Toshiya Hayashi and Hokuto Ando in 2013, curated by Marcello Smarrelli. 

The project – expressing its ‘thinking outside the box’ aptitude, a pioneering approach in which creativity and innovation combine in the pursuit of beauty – invites the audience to immerse in an unexpected and magical ethereal space, by evoking the lightness of air and warmth, two distinctive natural elements of Elica world.

Straordinaria
Palazzo Litta – Cortile d’onore
Corso Magenta 24, Milano
Open to visitors: from Monday 15 to Sunday 21 April, 10.00 am  – 7.30 pm 

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In his artistic practice, Agostino Iacurci uses painting, sculpture, drawing, light and sound, heterogeneously combining various media to create immersive installations that intimately dialogue with places – visionary spaces in which stories, personal memories, literary references and vernacular tales freely converge. His large-scale pictorial interventions, which have earned him international fame, take the form of large painting interventions – an original reinterpretation of what is known as ‘talking architecture’.  

Starting from those considerations, Agostino Iacurci was invited to conceive a project for AIRFORCE’s new plant, which, as is typical of the Premio Ermanno Casoli, stems from a training need identified within the company in collaboration with the Human Resources department. After being acquired by Elica and seeing its headquarters transferred from Fabriano to Cerreto D’Esi, AIRFORCE needed to recreate the cohesion, energy and spirit of sharing that have always characterised it, but also to offer a welcoming and familiar place for its workers.  

The intervention will be the result of a series of actions that will start in May and will involve the entire company population – around 100 managers, employees and workers – without any hierarchical distinction, with the aim of transforming a large portion of the plant, which is currently used as a transit area, into a place for employees to rest and meet.  

With this message, which gets straight to the essence of things, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli together with the artist Claire Fontaine wishes a Merry Christmas.

The exhortation is to contrast the madness of the world by opposing it with the transformative gaze of children.

The drawings were realized by the children of Elica employees as part of the workshop “Gli animali scappati” (Runaway Animals), conceived for the ninth edition of E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids by Claire Fontaine, curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

The young participants were asked to draw their favorite animals, whether real or fantastic, imagining a daring escape from the illustrated books to the large white sheet passing through the heads of the artists “always open, like a door without key”.

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Claire Fontaine’s new luminous installation entitled IL PERSONALE was conceived for the most iconic location of Elica’s Fabriano headquarters, stemming from the reflections generated during the workshop Lavoro femminile visibile e invisibile, attended by a group of 30 women who hold managerial roles within the company. In the light of some fundamental concepts of feminism –that the artistic duo has been exploring since its beginnings – the participants were asked to express themselves on the theme of female empowerment, with the aim of highlighting their difficulties in reconciling work and family.

The artwork thus becomes a reflection on the status of women in the professional and social context, bringing to light their value and emphasizing the importance of a broader political vision to promote equality and respect for women’s rights as transformative agents of society. 

Project supported by Regione Marche – Assessorato alla Cultura

[Read the press release]

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An event promoted by the Ermanno Casoli Foundation will be held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo on Thursday 24 November at 11.30 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Ariafina, a joint venture between Elica and Fuji Industrial, one of the longest running relationships, from a trade point of view, between Italy and Japan.

To seal this relationship, which goes beyond business, Elica and the Ermanno Casoli Foundation have commissioned a work to the artist Gianluca Malgeri, bearing witness to how contemporary art is increasingly a founding value for the Fabriano company and how the Foundation manages to develop successful cultural paths to promote our artists even beyond national borders.

This is how Iride was born, a diptych consisting of two geographical maps on whose surface a double path is outlined, uniting Italy and Japan. The first route retraces the itinerary of the Rome-Tokyo Raid, the flight made in 1920 by two young Italian pilots that became part of aviation history; the second route traces the link between Fabriano and Tokyo, celebrating the twenty-year collaboration between Elica and Fuji Industrial.
“When Francesco Casoli called me to discuss the contents of the artwork to be realized – says Malgeri – he told to me more than about the professional relationship, about the emotional and esteem bond that exists with the Kashimura family. For this reason, since the first research, my goal was to create an artwork that above all reflected this emotional involvement”.

The composition ideally recalls two eyes, a double vision,  a common and shared goal that becomes the metaphor for this professional and emotional bond.

During the event, Francesco Casoli will donate a part of the diptych to Kosuke Kashimura, Chairman of Fuji Industrial. The two parts that compose the work, in fact, have been conceived so that, united or separated, they can always be in relationship with each other, regardless of the distance and the place where they will be once divided.

The venue chosen to celebrate this important anniversary was not accidental: The Italian Culture Institute in Tokyo is an institution committed to spreading our country’s history and culture, as well as promoting Italian creativity in Japan. The building where the Institute is based, designed by Gae Aulenti, is one of the most significant symbols of the strong relationship between the two nations. Moreover, the Ariafina joint venture, combining the beauty of Italian design with the flawless functionality of Japanese industrial tradition, is an excellent example of how two seemingly distant worlds are able to communicate, also thanks to the universal language of art.

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Due to his interest in the dialectic that occurs between industrial and artistic production, in this project Satorre reflects about the nature of traces left by workers on the products they help to create. Unlike works of art, objects made on production lines are standardized and follow strict criteria linked to functionality and design. The artist focused on the contrasts between personal expression and rules, instinct and quality assurance, subjective proposals and functional standards. The name of the project, “Pelusa” (‘fluff’ in English), underlines Satorre’s interest in the involuntary yet unavoidable personal residue present in any production process, a surplus that, as much as one tries to eradicate it, keeps occurring.

ZONA CONCE opens in Fabriano on 3 July 2021: the new cultural hub born out of the requalification of the former tannery buildings will host artists, exhibitions, workshops and guests from all over Italy for an opening event that will also enable people to meet and interact.

The FEC is happy to make its contribution with a series of activities curated by our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli: WORKSHOP FOLDING COMET by Leonardo Petrucci Saturday 3 July 2021 |10 am – Fabriano Free of charge with compulsory reservation at this link: https://www.eventbrite.it/…/biglietti-folding-comet-di… 20 persons maximum

4:45 pm OPENING OF THE WORK

OPENING WALL PAINTING made by TELLAS on the wall opposite the entrance to the new ZONA CONCE cultural hub in Via Le Conce 76

Saturday 3 July 2021 | 12 pm – Fabriano

Free streaming; reservations for in-person attendance can be made here: https://zonaconce.it/programma/index.html TALK MATTEO FATO, ETTORE FAVINI, LEONARDO PETRUCCI, PIETRO RUFFO AND SISSI COME TOGETHER ON THE OCCASION OF A SPECIAL THINK TANK to share their ideas on how FILIGREE could be used in the future.

Saturday 3 July 2021 | 5 pm – Fabriano Free streaming; reservations for in-person attendance can be made here: https://zonaconce.it/programma/index.html

The full day’s programme is available at www.zonaconce.it

We would like to remind you that the event will be held in full compliance with the safety regulations and all the health and prevention provisions defined by the competent authorities to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. A specific safety protocol will be put in place by the organisation to further reduce any kind of risk with reference to the guidelines for the resumption of economic and social activities, Italian Decree-Law No. 65 of 18 May 2021, Italian Decree Law No. 52 of 21 April 2021

This volume recounts the story of a company seen through the eyes of Fabrizio Crisà, the designer who, through his work, was able to interpret the vision of his admiral, setting unexplored routes in a constant search for the wind of innovation and change. It shows products that are the result of the work of all those who have made them possible, from those who imagined them from the very beginning to those who designed and manufactured them. It speaks of people, of the passion of those who put themselves out there, but also of all those who, over the course of 50 years of activity, have contributed with thoughts, enthusiasm and dedication, but also with efforts, doubts, criticisms and sometimes even disagreements, which have served to review seemingly final stances and open up to different points of view in order to navigate towards distant horizons.

This book is dedicated to all of them.

Thanks to Domitilla Dardi and Etaoin shrdlu studio for helping us to make this project reality. A very special thanks to Fabrizio Crisà, Elica designer, for his precious and indefatigable work.

Matteo Fato, Cosa Naturale, 2020 (approx.)

The mind is in the likeness of a pine cone, which we carry as a representation of our pineal gland. Drawing a pine cone is a cerebral self-portrait, with the scales of all memories and all notions. It is our intimate, fatal compatibility with Nature. The wooden structure that houses the seeds of the pine cone in our internal ramification is commensurate with the natural destiny of our memory. Just as the spirals of a rose are equivalent to the limited revolutions of thoughts, so the whole of a pine cone resembles the congenital arrangement of fixed ideas. Every natural mystery teaches the mind to vegetate and not to be brilliant. Gianni Garrera

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presents Matteo Fato for the day of the contemporary. An exclusive content donated by the artist, winner of the XVIII edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize, to FEC on the occasion of the contemporary day organized by AMACI.

Matteo Fato, “The beauty of the world, in its landscape, burns the eyes; (you have to surrender, waving a white flag dirty with the ashes falling from the eyes, having it cleaned by the wind, to be able to cure them); before painting again “, 2020 (approximately) Brush cleaning on flag from landscape paintings, 130 x 80cm

The human body proceeds from the earth, everything that did not become human remained pure earth. The whole earth is matter not transformed into humanity. A flower is a stage of the earth of the terrestrial garden in which the human maturation of all Nature was interrupted.

Extract from the text by Gianni Garrera for: Flame of Love Viva (heaven and earth do not belong to the word), edited by Adele Cappelli, hired Gianni Garrera. Acquaviva Picena, Medieval Fortress / Church of San Rocco (A mouthful of art, Elpis Foundation & Galleria Continua)

Courtesy of the Artist & Monitor , Rome – Lisbon – Pereto (AQ)

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Matteo Fato won the 18^th edition of the Ermanno Casoli Award with “Gentile come un ritratto”, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, a project chosen for the sensitivity and effectiveness with which it has been able to deal with this particularly difficult time in which even the relational dimension of work is being put to the test by the pandemic. The artist has indeed decided to open his authorship to a collective operation, translating the pictorial gesture, namely the distinctive feature of his work, into a “collective act”, thereby recreating a sense of closeness and interaction with others. The work produced is the result of a temporary painting workshop set up for a week in Elica – a leading manufacturer of cooker hoods for kitchens – and headed by Matteo Fato, with the participation of 159 employees from the Fabriano, Mergo and Castelfidardo offices (FIMEMotors).

The title Gentile come un ritratto (Gentle as a portrait) deliberately recalls the alleged self-portrait of painter Gentile da Fabriano (Fabriano 1370 approx., Rome 1427), which appears in the Adoration of the Magi painting (1423), now preserved in the Uffizi. Matteo Fato’s challenge was multifaceted: starting from a masterpiece of the past closely linked to the talent and beauty of the region to collectively conceive a work in the present, and, in this leap in time, moving from Gentile’s self-portrait to a relevant portrait: that of a company based in Fabriano that, driven by the passion of its founder Ermanno Casoli, has distinguished itself in the field of design on a worldwide level, in an ideal connection with Gentile’s Renaissance workshop.

The participants had the opportunity to interact with the artist personally, though always in complete safety, reflecting together on the nature of the portrait as a form of expression that represents not only an individuality, but the era that characterises it. In order to portray a subject, it is necessary to be able to achieve “familiarity” with the historical, cultural and social context that surrounds them. Keeping this in mind, each of the participants received from the artist the key to leave their mark, in search of a similarity based on their own experience and everyday life. The result is a work that, in its plurality and abstraction, is capable of representing all those who have contributed to its realization.

The portrait, as is customary in Matteo Fato’s painting, is part of a larger installation entitled Gentili come un ritratto (Gentles as a portrait) made up of other works linked to his work process: indeed, other paintings have been extracted from this collective operation, produced from the cloths used to clean the brushes at every change of hand and colour, in turn placed and framed inside their transport crates.

The project is part of the celebrations for the 50^th anniversary of the birth of Elica and follows the methodology of E-STRAORDINARIO – the training programme featuring contemporary art that has distinguished FEC’s activities for over a decade. The installation will become part of the Elica Corporate Collection, which can be visited upon reservation.

Participation in the inauguration is subject to the limitations due to the current health situation; it will be possible to participate only and exclusively upon reservation and up to full capacity.

Information and reservations
segreteria@fondazionecasoli.org

From Monday 21 September and for the whole week the artist Matteo Fato will be in Elica to create, together with all the people who work there, “Gentile as a portrait”, curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

WATCH THE STUDIO VISIT

Matteo Fato was born in 1979 in Pescara, city where he lives and works. He has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino since 2009. He partook in many exhibitions in private galleries and public museums in Italy and abroad. In 2012 he completed his residency at the Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art (Paris), with the participation in the exhibition The collection Giuliana Thomas et Setari, retour à l’intime (La maison rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert); in July 2017 he took part in the OPEN20 exhibition at the Mostyn Museum in Wales. He took part in numerous artists’ residencies, such as: the Spinola Banna Foundation (Turin, 2008); ArtOmi, (New York); and in Norway within the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dalsåsen – NKD (2015). In 2016, he partook in the 16^th Art Quadrennial of Rome. In March 2018 opened a solo exhibition titled Heresy (of the) Anthology at Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, Italy); in June 2019 he opened a solo show entitled Night Scene by the Sea at the Visual Arts Center – Pescheria (Pesaro). His works are included in many private and public collections in Italy and abroad.

Gentile come un ritratto – As gentle as a portrait revolves around two traditional pillars of artistic practice: painting and portrait. Its production is composed of various phases and will culminate in September, when Matteo Fato will work in the company. Fato will invite the employees to reflect on their nature through the figure of Gentile da Fabriano, a protagonist and interpreter of the Renaissance period who, thanks to his genius and ideas, made the city where he was born famous. Together with the artist, following in the footsteps of Gentile, the people of Elica will produce a choral portrait of the company, which, thanks to the determination of its founder and the contribution of all those who work there, has become an international reference point.

A temporal short circuit will be created which will combine two stories and two desires to achieve the same goal: to follow one’s passions, to excel in one’s work, to make one’s land great.

The activity, scheduled for the last week of September and which will be held in Fabriano from 21 to 23 September and in Castelfidardo in FIMEMotors, from 23 to 24 September, was presented by Elica and FEC throught a webinar with the artist Matteo Fato.

The 8th of July, at 3 pm, Mauro Saccchetto- CEO Elica, Alessandro Innocenti – Group Chief HR Officer, Viviana Cattelan – FEC Director, Marcello Smarrelli – FEC Artistic Director discussed the workshop with Matteo Fato who closed the meeting anticipating the sending of a personal letter as an invitation to participate numerous.

It is possible to see the recording of the webinar HERE

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Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018) is the project that Elena Mazzi carried out together with Elica employees following the invitation she received by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli as the winner of its annual award. The title is inspired by the famous essay by Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, which saw the author decide to keep the misprint present in the title (massage instead of message) to confirm his thesis on the non-neutrality of the media. The Elica company, to which this theme is very dear, required a training session on communication among employees, and thus provided an opportunity for the artist to develop a sort of “method”.

Indeed, the project proposes a reflection on communication techniques and strategies, stressing the possibility of making mistakes during the transmission of a message and the way this affects the course of subsequent events. By analysing the Elica context and starting from the word “change”, which is widely used within the company environment, the artist experimented with various communication techniques, thereby revealing its proximity to the word “revolution”, understood in the most scientific sense of the term, namely movement, rotation and therefore change.

Texts: Elena Mazzi, Marcello Smarrelli
Graphic design: Elena Mazzi
Translation: Matteo Bugiolacchi
Proofreading: Cristina Terzoni
Photo credits: Daniele Alef Grillo, Michela Curti, Elena Mazzi
Language: Italian, English
Pages: 52 + 12
Dimensions: book 22.5 x 16 cm; insert 16 x 11 cm

The artist’s book is not for sale and has been produced by Boîte in a limited edition of 200 copies.

We always associate our desires with the stars, contemplate them and ask them to know whether, how and when we will get what is most dear to us; the sky is where we look for our constellation, namely the astral lines that represent us and guide our lives.

Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Dipper, is formed by seven main stars arranged in the shape of a cart with a rudder, the last of which is the North Star, which is called this way because it is only about 1° from the North Pole of the celestial sphere.

The book can be found in all the best bookstores or HERE

ENJOY THE READING!

On Friday, the 13th of September, the usual appointment with Elica employees children will be held in its seventh edition, organized by the Ermanno Casoli Foundation. This year the Bianco-Valente artist duo will be the protagonist and for the occasion they have created the workshop entitled “The palce where I live”, curated by our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli, which will focus on the function that places exercise within us.

Artists and participants will re-read and reinterpret the automotive, tourist, geographical maps and photos that the children will have gathered, during the summer, together with their families. With the maps cut and gathered randomly, new ones will be built, testifying to the individual stories of each participant, from which it will clearly emerge that the story of the life of each of us consists of the interweaving of places and experiences made during our journey, which in turn intertwine with the places and experiences of many other people.

PRESS RELEASE

Through this specific outdoor activity and faithful to its primary objective of creating and encouraging dialogue between both the artistic-cultural sphere and the industrial one, the FEC promotes an in-depth knowledge of the Italian and international cultural heritage, allowing, through the language of art, to strengthen creativity and lateral thinking. Guided by Marcello Smarrelli, the group will visit the Pesaro Civic Museums, the exhibition “Agostino Iacurci Tracing Vitruvio. Dream journey between the pages of De Architectura and the spaces of the Pescheria Visual Arts Center where the personal exhibition of the artist Matteo Fato entitled “Night Scene On The Sea” is hosted. Finally, the artist Luigi Carboni will open his atelier to tell about his experience with art, both as a professor at the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts, and as an artista as well.

The initiative also represents an important opportunity for socializing and building a group identity based on the sharing of social and cultural experiences and values. Making art an ethical model of behavior thus becomes a goal that is not only educational but socially responsible.

Smarrelli’s intervention will focus on the benefits of art for the company, its ability to become an instrument of innovation of personal identity and activator of more effective behaviors; Art as a way to renew learning and knowledge creation, a means to innovate physical space, products and business processes; Art as a new perspective to conceive competitive advantage.

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On Tuesday, 14th of May, our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli will be a guest of Urbino Fine Arts Academy leading the talk intitled “The form of error” with the artist Nicola Samorì, in continuity with his personal exhibition held at the Pescheria Pesaro Visual Arts Center in the summer of 2017.
At the meeting, organized by prof. Sebastiano Guerrera as part of his painting techniques course, the artist Matteo Fato and the art critic Alberto Zanchetta will participate. A working class for selected students will follow on May the 15th.
The event is organized in collaboration with Fondazione Pescheria – Centro Arti Visive and it is reserved for students of the Urbino Fine Arts Academy.

FEC artistic director Smarrelli will present the activities that characterize the Foundation, contextualizing them within the history of art in a targeted, exhaustive path, which highlighted, through significant examples, how art can no longer be identified with a material product, but it becomes a place of meeting, dialogue and comparison managed by the artist according to his own methodologies.

The Ermanno Casoli Foundation continues the collaboration with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan with a classic that is now in its fourth edition: HAND, the workshop by Francesca Grilli, which offers to the Master’s students in Arts Management the opportunity to live a training experience already tried and tested in the corporate environment, addressing and analyzing their contents and methods. The novelty: it will be all in English.

HAND # 4, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, is part of the course directed by Prof. Francesco Tedeschi and coordinated by Prof. Chiara Paolino, Business Organization researcher and author, together with Marcello Smarrelli and Deborah Carè, of the book “Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli” (Innovating enterprises through art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method), published in 2018 by the EGEA Publishing House.

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The Premio Ermanno Casoli is celebrating its 20^th anniversary: the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli foundation is inaugurating a special edition of the Prize on Saturday 13^th April at 5:00 pm with the site-specific artwork The Relay, by artist Patrick Tuttofuoco.

Tuttofuoco’s large neon light installation revolves around the most important themes that characterise the artist’s research: family relationships and generational exchanges, the mechanisms and bonds that characterise and bring together communities and the study of territories. The title makes explicit reference to the relay race: the act of receiving something and being able to pass it on to another human being becomes a metaphor for exchange, generosity and recognition, but also the changing of generations and life itself. The simple gesture of holding an object in one’s hands is expanded upon and shown in all its stages, thereby giving a spatial dimension to the notion of time.

The Relay will be donated to the Museo Premio Ermanno Casoli 1998-2007, which will be inaugurated on the same day within the Santa Lucia monumental complex of Serra San Quirico (Ancona).

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Invited by the Rotary Club of Alba, Wednesday, February the 27th, at the Palazzo Banca D’Alba (Cuneo province), the FEC decennial experience was told by the three guests through practical examples of artistic interventions in companies ispired on the book “Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli”, which they presented showing each one the issues related to their professional environment. President Elica Francesco Casoli told about the benefits that the presence of the Foundation and its activities have brought to the company, highlighting the need, in the business world, to conceive competitive advantage through art in a new way; Professor and Researcher Chiara Paolino highlighted the ability of art to become an instrument of personal identity innovation and activator of more effective behaviors as well as a way to renew learning, creation of knowledge and to innovate the working space ; finally, the art historian and FEC artistic director Marcello Smarrelli highlighted how the curator’s role is crucial to project and implement the artistic interventions inside the company, looking at art as a system of knowledge transmissions, democratic and circular, recognizing in this a very powerful means of formation.

Friday the 1st of February 2019, at 4 pm, at the Delloiacono’s COMUNICA headquarters in Pescara, will be held When to collect are the companies, the last meeting of the project Start your collection promoted by Fondazione Aria, conceived and organized by Deliacono COMUNICA in collaboration with Collezione da Tiffany / Collection at Tiffany’s. With the aim of providing the basic tools to learn about the art market through a series of workshops, meetings and guided tours, the project investigated the issues inherent in starting a collection: from market dynamics to the first purchase up to the creation of a private or corporate contemporary art collection.

On the same occasion, given the meeting’s topic dedicated to corporate collecting, with case-history on private and corporate collection, on Friday 1st February 2019 the Ermanno Casoli Foundation presents the book I Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli | Innovating the company with art. The method of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, published by Egea in 2018.

The comparison, opened by the institutional greetings of the Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities Professor Alberto Bonisoli, will focus not only on what currently the art, in the broadest sense of the term, is able to generate, but also on the designs and synergies that this sector is able to guarantee.

The 17 educational institutions Cians (Academy of Fine Arts “Aldo Galli” of Como, Academy of Fine Arts and Design Poliarte of Ancona, Academy of Fine Arts “GB Tiepolo” of Udine, Academy of Costume and Fashion of Rome, Italian Academy of Art, Fashion and Design of Florence, Accademy of Fine Arts, SantaGiulia of Brescia, IAAD – the Italian University of Design, IED – European Institute of Design of Milan, Istituto Marangoni of Milan, Istituto Modartech of Pontedera (PI), IUAD – Academy of Fashion in Naples, LABA – Free Academy of Fine Arts in Brescia, LABA – Free Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, NABA – New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts in Rome, Sae Institute in Milan, Saint Louis College of Music of Rome) will bring to the discussion table the requests of a population of over twenty thousand users that includes first of all Italian and foreign students and to follow, teachers and employees.

The works, opened by the artistic director of Macro Asilo Giorgio de Finis, introduced by the president Cians arch. Fabio Mongelli and moderated by the philosopher Nicolas Martino, will be anticipated by the report of a representative of the Ministry of Education, University and Research, in view of the assembly of the States General Afam (High artistic and musical training) scheduled for next February. Following the reports of the lawyer. Anna Rita Fioroni, president of Confcommercio Professioni (Professional designer: skills and qualification of the changing market), of the arch. Dario Curatolo, member of the Adi Steering Committee (outline of the project, the Italian way), of dr. Marco Tortoioli Ricci, president of Aiap (The pedagogy of the project), of Dr. Sofia Gnoli, journalist and fashion expert (Marketing and fashion: the heritage and the brand), by dr. Marcello Smarrelli, Ermanno Casoli Foundation artistic director (Innovating the company with art), by dr. Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, Exibart editorial director (New professional opportunities for those leaving the creativity factories). The conclusion will be preceded by a space dedicated to the contributions of Miur / Afam representatives and Cians Institutions.

In this particular occasion the official website Cians will be presented: www.ciansedu.it.

On Thursday 22nd November 2018 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm, the artwork Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018), produced by artist Elena Mazzi for the 17th edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize, one of the most important Italian prizes in the field of contemporary art, will be inaugurated in the Fabriano headquarters of Elica.

The workshop that was held in Fabriano last June saw Diego Agostini (a trainer specialised in management training from the company Commitment) work with 20 Elica employees, who had been asked by the artist to select words taken from everyday management jargon. The aim was to draft a glossary to be used in a specifically modified version of the game of Chinese whispers, thereby providing a practical example of the interruptions and distractions that can occur when a message is to be transmitted from a sender to a recipient. The participants created devices aimed at facilitating or encouraging verbal communication by assembling original, albeit functional objects with materials typical of the production of Elica.

The objects and words were used to produce an environmental installation entitled Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018), a sculpture composed of two cast aluminium elements, namely the sum of the ten communication devices produced during the training activity, and a wall painting containing the words selected and “played with” during the game of Chinese whispers.

The book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli by Deborah Carè, Chiara Paolino and Marcello Smarrelli, with preface by Pier Luigi Celli, will be presented on Friday, 2nd November 2018, from 4 to 5 pm, in Turin, within the framework of the 25th edition of ARTISSIMA.

The book, published by the Egea publishing house, aims at promoting good practices in the organisation of art events within enterprises by discussing the most recent theoretical approaches regarding the relationship between art and business while analysing the implementation of the very “method” devised by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli foundation, based on its ten-year experience with important Italian companies, and similar methods adopted at an international level.

The presentation, which will take place at the Book Corner of the fair, will feature authors Chiara Paolino – Company Organisation researcher at the Cattolica University of Milan, Marcello Smarrelli – Artistic Director of FEC and artist Marinella Senatore.

Use the entry ticket to the Fair to access the presentation

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Marcello Smarrelli – FEC artistic director –  participates at the What’s Art for? What is the purpose of art today ? talk. The research-action path, conceived and curated by Catterina Seia, started at ArtVerona 2016 with Anna Somers Cocks,  The Art Newspaper director,  ends with this appointment in which it will be discuss how art plays an important role in everyday life and in the construction of the new generations’ thinking. The results of this survey will be shared with exponents of the art world, of the enterprise and scholars, together with the students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona, coordinated by Professor Elena Ciresola.

www.artverona.it

Thursday 13^th September 2018 will see the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) foundation present, at the headquarters of the 24 Ore Business School of Milan, a new event belonging to the E-STRAORDINARIO cycle of workshops, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which will focus on Elena Mazzi, winner of the 17^th edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli prize. On this occasion, the FEC – which has been a partner of the 24 Ore Business School since 2012 – will propose to the students of the Master’s Degree in Economy and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage the Mass age, message, mess age project by artist Elena Mazzi, with the help of Diego Agostini, a trainer specialising in management training.

The Mass age, message, mess age workshop, launched by the artist in 2015 as a work in progress to shed light on the dynamics underlying communication strategies, analyses in depth the transmission, reception, distortion and processing of messages.

The students will be asked to pinpoint the words belonging to the everyday language of management in order to compile a glossary and create elements that can facilitate or hinder verbal communication through the creative, albeit functional assembly of objects made of various materials. The chosen words and the resulting devices will be used in a performance inspired by the game of Chinese whispers.

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Patrick Tuttofuoco will be the protagonist of the 6th edition of E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids, the project by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli dedicated to the children aged between 6 and 10 of Elica employees and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which will take place on Thursday 6th September at the Elica Headquarters in Fabriano.

The Family Feeling project will see Tuttofuoco analyse, together with 50 children, the concept of family, namely the first form of social organisation understood as a group of individuals bound by kinship ties or a sense of belonging (to the school, the workplace, a group of friends, etc.), and the role it plays in the definition of one’s identity, thereby leading to a reflection on the importance of interpersonal relationships and the growth processes that transcend the mere biological family.

The artist will build upon the analysis of one of the most popular devices of Art History, namely the portrait, and will invite the participants to experience the many forms of this artistic genre by experimenting with its different approaches, media and techniques.

Moreover, Tuttofuoco will select a series of drawings made during the workshop, which will be reproduced on the body of a model of cooker hood produced by Elica. The resulting sculptures will thus make part of a large choral artwork symbolising the great Elica family, which is composed of the people who work there and their children.

Create amazing photos able to subvert the laws of physics by playing with objects, people, space and gravity. However, the real challenge is being creative from the standpoint of vision, overturning the usual understanding of things by exploring new, hidden and original realities.

How can I participate?
Take a picture of reality while upsetting the perspective, give a name to it and share it on your Instagram profile with #SwitchTheRules and the mention to the dedicated official page @elicarianuova.

A panel composed of Cristina Casoli (President of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli), Francesco Casoli (President of Elica), Maria Claudia Clemente (architect, Studio Labics), Fabrizio Crisà (designer), Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Artistic Director of Fondazione Malaspina), Rä Di Martino (artist) and Marcello Smarrelli (Artistic Director of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli) will select the best photos, which will be included in an exhibition curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva and taking place in Rome from 25^th to 27^th October 2018, in the rooms of Pastificio Cerere.

All photos with #SwitchTheRules and mention @elicarianuova will have to be published on their (public) Instagram profile no later than 16^th September. The users whose work will be selected for the exhibition will be contacted by the organisers, for their photos to be sent via email.

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On Wednesday 25^th July 2018, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) will present, at the headquarters of ISTUD (Istituto Studi Direzionali) in Milan, Asap Hub, a new E-STRAORDINARIO event that will focus on artist Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

Dandini de Sylva will work with a group of teachers, researchers and project managers of ISTUD, the most relevant private Business School of Italy, founded in 1970 by Confindustria and a group of large Italian and multinational companies that included Olivetti, Pirelli and IBM. The workshop, which builds upon a study on photographic mistakes, is entitled Accidenti. By use of a series of experiments carried out with the avail of instant film, the participants will delve into the topics of control, randomness, abstraction and the representation of landscapes. The activities will revolve around the simplicity of visual perception and a quasi-artisanal printing technique, which will underlie a deep reflection on the nature of photography.

At the end, the produced photographs will be featured in a exhibition at the headquarters of ISTUD, and will make part of a single, multifaceted artwork that will remind participants of the importance of working together without forgetting one’s individual background, which is paramount in a highly professional and intellectual organisation such as ISTUD.

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Visionair is a small architecture, a mysterious object that invites the visitors to enter. The interior is an enveloping space: a large video on the floor, reflected on the side walls, immerses the visitor in a surreal and upside-down dimension of reality.

The idea of Visionair comes from a reflection on the meaning of the inversion of the point of view, which is the concept underlying the recent researches carried out by Elica.

The installation, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, completely independent from the context in terms of language and materials, finds a strong dialectic relationship with the portico of Cà Granda, from which it mutates its own geometric and spatial matrix.

Visionair is part of a research that Labics has been carrying out since some years on the relationship between structure and space.

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16^th-22^nd april h. 10:00-24:00
23^rd-27^th april h. 10:00-22:00
28^th april h. 10:00-18:00

Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is the book’s title; it is published by Egea, and will be presented on Tuesday, April 10th 2018, at 16.30, in Milan. The venue will be Sala San Paolo G.129, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.

The presentation will be introduced by Prof. Domenico Bodega, Dean of the Department of Economics of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and the moderator will be Marco Carminati, art historian and Sole 24 Ore journalist. Besides the authors, Francesco Casoli, Elica President and artista Ettore Favini will take part to the meeting.

During an informal meeting and open to participants, the authors will talk about the main topics of the book: how businesses are benefited by art, the art ability to be a tool for personal identity innovation and a trigger of more effective behaviors; art as a way to renew learning and knowledge creation, as a way to innovate the physical space, the products and the enterprise processes, that is a new way to conceive the competitive advantage through art.

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Sissi enriches 10x10xFEC, the album celebrating  the 10^th anniversary of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, composed by the images of 10 artists –  Francesco Arena, Francesco Barocco, Chiara Camoni, Danilo Correale, Ettore Favini, Anna Franceschini, Francesca Grilli, Diego Marcon, Andrea Mastrovito, and Sissi as well –  who personally interpret the number 10.

“The poster’s image announcing the project was one of our 2003 works entitled After Love, inspired by Buster Keaton’s short movie One Week, which narrates the surreal and comic vicissitudes related to the construction of a prefabricated house. We made a scale clay model of the house and set it in the characteristic winter climate recalling Christmas.”  Vedovamazzei

The five sound tracks forming the sound pièce content produced by the students in collaboration with the artist, will be installed in the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts space located in Urbino, from 4 to 15 December 2017 with the following opening hours: Monday – Friday from 10 am to 6 pm and Saturdays from 9 am to 12 am.

Dispayed participants:

Laura Affatato, Marco Almonti, Lorenzo Bartolucci, Vladimir Bertozzi, Andrea Betti, Elena Buttinelli, Chiara Cairone, Carolina Campanelli, Emanuela Caponi, Eva Rebecca Cucchi, Luana D’Alfonso, Elisa del Pero, Francesca del Nio, Emilio Giacomelli, Vito Jon Bove, Lorenzo Lembo, Marco Lombardi, Alex David Luchetti, Anita Lonzi, Domiziana Luzii, Davide Magrini, Silvia Mantellini, Amedeo Mencarini, Katherine Mercedes, Matilde Morri, Maria Grazia Mortilla, Laura Nardin, Cristina Palmisani, Valentina Sammaciccia, Laura Tiberi, Nadia Tritarelli, Hannah von Call.

The new image created by the artist Anna Franceschini in two different versions enriches the 10x10xFEC album that celebrates 10 years of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation (2007-2017).

During the year, the homepage will host the invited artists’ images: Francesco Arena, Francesco Barocco, Chiara Camoni, Danilo Correale, Ettore Favini, Anna Franceschini, Francesca Grilli, Diego Marcon, Andrea Mastrovito, and Sissi.