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1 October 2024
(IT) FECincontra Paolo Icaro

(IT) In occasione dell’inaugurazione di “Artificio naturale” – la scultura ambientale di Paolo Icaro acquisita nella collezione della Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli di Fabriano – abbiamo avuto il piacere di porre alcune domande all’artista.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

23 September 2024
Opening “Artificio naturale” by Paolo Icaro

On the occasion of the twentieth Giornata del Contemporaneo, promoted by AMACI, the environmental sculpture by Paolo Icaro, “Artificio naturale”, which has been acquired into the collection of the Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli in Fabriano, will be presented to the public.

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.

23 September 2024
Fare, disfare, rifare, vedere – workshops for children inspired by the art of Paolo Icaro

On Friday 11 and Saturday 12 October, at the Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli in Fabriano, creative workshops for children (aged 5-10) will be held, curated by Francesca Castellani, inspired by the art of Paolo Icaro.

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

18 September 2024
(IT) Talk con Paolo Icaro e Marcello Smarrelli

(IT) Domani, giovedì 19 settembre alle ore 11:45, presso il Palazzo del Podestà di Fabriano, si terrà il talk dell’artista Paolo Icaro in conversazione con Marcello Smarrelli.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

6 September 2024
(IT) FECincontra Andrea Marabini, Chief Quality & Technical Officer di Elica

(IT) Incontriamo Andrea Marabini, Chief Quality & Technical Officer di Elica, che ci racconta il ruolo fondamentale del reparto Ricerca e Sviluppo e della collaborazione con l’artista Anna Galtarossa nell’ideazione del workshop THE SMELL FACTORY per la decima edizione di E-STRAORDINARIO for kids, il progetto di FEC a cura di Marcello Smarrelli, pensato per i figli dei dipendenti dell’azienda.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

2 September 2024
(IT) E-STRAORDINARIO for kids #10 con Anna Galtarossa

(IT) Lunedì 9 settembre torna E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids, il progetto della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli – a cura di Marcello Smarrelli – realizzato in collaborazione con Elica, giunto quest’anno alla sua decima edizione che vede protagonista l’artista Anna Galtarossa.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

27 August 2024
(IT) FECincontra Anna Galtarossa

(IT) L’artista Anna Galtarossa, protagonista della decima edizione di E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids, ci racconta della sua pratica artistica, dall’utilizzo di materiali trovati e riciclati al racconto di storie mitologiche e fantastiche, passando per l’importanza del contatto diretto con il mondo naturale.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

17 June 2024
(IT) Inaugurata l’opera di Agostino Iacurci: Fiori diversi al naturale | Premio Ermanno Casoli XXII edizione

(IT) Sabato 15 giugno è stata inaugurata nella sede di Airforce a Cerreto d’Esi (AN), Fiori diversi al naturale, l’opera d’arte site-specific realizzata da Agostino Iacurci per la XXII edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli, a cura di Marcello Smarrelli.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

30 May 2024
(IT) Il metodo FEC all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Macerata

(IT)

Venerdì 31 maggio Marcello Smarrelli, Direttore artistico della FEC, sarà all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Macerata tra i protagonisti di “Time to talk #1 – Luoghi e Artisti del contemporaneo”: prima edizione di una serie di appuntamenti annuali dedicati a dialoghi e confronti sulle esperienze artistiche più significative nelle Marche dagli anni ’70 ad oggi.

Attraverso i nostri progetti più iconici, Marcello Smarrelli presenterà il Metodo della FEC con il quale portiamo l’arte contemporanea nelle aziende da oltre 20 anni.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

9 May 2024
(IT) FECincontra Agostino Iacurci

(IT) Il vincitore della XXII edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli ci racconta della sua pratica artistica, di come essa si è evoluta nel tempo e dell’importanza che ricoprono nel suo lavoro la relazione e il confronto con le persone e i luoghi.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

15 April 2024
(IT) Inaugurata Straordinaria, l’installazione site-specific di we+ al Fuorisalone 2024

(IT) È aperta al pubblico Straordinaria, l’installazione site-specific promossa da ElicaFondazione Ermanno Casoli in occasione del Fuorisalone 2024, ideata dallo studio giapponese di design we+ per il Cortile d’onore di Palazzo Litta, a cura di Marcello Smarrelli.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

11 April 2024
FECincontra we+

The Japanese design studio we+, founded in Tokyo by Toshiya Hayashi and Hokuto Ando, tells its story and how “Straordinaria”, the site-specific installation created for FEC and Elica on the occasion of the Fuorisalone 2024, was born.

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. 

4 April 2024
(IT) Il metodo FEC all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo

(IT) Giovedì 4 aprile il Direttore Artistico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, Marcello Smarrelli sarà protagonista di un incontro all’interno del Corso “Mercato dell’arte” della prof.ssa Laura Barreca presso l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

3 April 2024
Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli at Fuorisalone 2024 with Straordinaria by we+

Elica, in collaboration with Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, presents a suggestive installation at Fuorisalone 2024, designed by Japanese design studio we+.

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
 

25 March 2024
(IT) FECincontra Airforce

(IT) Ruggero Pinto, General Manager, e Alberta Traballoni, HR, ci raccontano Airforce, azienda del gruppo Elica in cui l’artista Agostino Iacurci realizzerà, insieme a tutta la popolazione aziendale, un’opera site-specific nella nuova sede di Cerreto d’Esi (AN) per la XXII edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli. Scopriamo insieme quali sono le aspettative e gli obiettivi che Airforce si propone di raggiungere attraverso questa speciale collaborazione.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

14 March 2024
Winner of the 22nd edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli announces the winner of the 22nd edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli: the important recognition in the field of contemporary art in Italy has been awarded to Agostino Iacurci (Foggia, 1986) who will create a site-specific artwork for the AIRFORCE headquarters in Cerreto D’Esi (AN) – a company belonging to the Elica group. 

In the words of Marcello Smarrelli, Artistic Director of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, “With his own highly personal style, Agostino Iacurci represents reality, and the landscape in particular. In addition to such a highly expressive style, a fundamental element of Iacurci’s practice is his aptitude for relationships, which prompts him to share the creative process with heterogeneous groups of people.”  

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.  

21 December 2023
GREETINGS BY CLAIRE FONTAINE

Claire Fontaine, 2023

 

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” (Albert Einstein)

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”.

12 December 2023
(IT) FECincontra Stefano Coletto, Curatore Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa per il progetto “Alchimie Culturali”

(IT) Stefano Coletto, curatore della Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa di Venezia, ci racconta “Alchimie Culturali”, progetto che crea interessanti sinergie tra il mondo dell’arte e quello delle imprese, in collaborazione con Confindustria Veneto.

 

Leggi l’intervista e scopri le affinità con il metodo FEC, esempio da imitare e raggiungere sia in fase di ideazione che nelle successive attività di divulgazione del progetto.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

20 November 2023
(IT) ARTE E IMPRESA. IPOTESI DI UNA RELAZIONE POSSIBILE | Il metodo FEC a Venezia

(IT) Mercoledì 22 novembre alle ore 16, presso Palazzetto Tito a Venezia, il nostro direttore artistico Marcello Smarrelli presenterà il metodo ideato dalla Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) per portare l’arte contemporanea nelle imprese, nato da oltre dieci anni di esperienza e sperimentazione nelle aziende. 

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

27 September 2023
Visits to Fondazione Ermanno Casoli on the occasion of the 19th Giornata del Contemporaneo

On Saturday, October 7th, 2023, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) joins the 19th Giornata del Contemporaneo, the great event promoted by AMACI, with the extraordinary visit to the new site-specific installation by Claire Fontaine, Il personale (2023), realized for the XXI edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize and to the other works from the contemporary art collection hosted in the Elica spaces in Fabriano, the global leader in the kitchen extraction systems market and main supporter of the FEC.

FEC has pioneered the investigation of the link between art and industry. It is now a cutting-edge reference model in managerial education through contemporary art.
Every activity promoted by FEC – which finds in Elica the ideal incubator in which processes and results can be experimented, with and later applied to other situations – involves internationally renowned artists in the design and creation of a permanent artwork for a company, by actively engaging its employees.

This particular and original collection is included in “Global Corporate Collection” (2015), a volume dedicated to the 100 best artistic corporate collections worldwide.

Among others, the artworks of the following artists will be visible: Francesco Arena, Bianco Valente, Fabio Barile, Francesco Barocco, Matteo Fato, Marcello Maloberti, Elena Mazzi, Francesco Neri, Perino & Vele, Jorge Satorre, Sissi, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Vedovamazzei.

Visits will start at 10.00 am, 11.00 am and 12.00 pm. Reservation is required.

25 September 2023
IL PERSONALE, a site-specific artwork by Claire Fontaine has been presented | Premio Ermanno Casoli 21st edition

IL PERSONALE, a site-specific artwork created by collective artist Claire Fontaine winner of the 21st edition of Premio Ermanno Casoli, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, has been presented on Sunday 24 September 2023 at ELICA in Fabriano.

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 womens rights as transformative agents of society. 

Project supported by Regione Marche – Assessorato alla Cultura

[Read the press release]

1 July 2023
(IT) TOCC – Transizione Digitale Organismi Culturali e Creativi

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

13 June 2023
(IT) MARSHY vince la Menzione Speciale CULTURA D’IMPRESA del Premio CULTURA + IMPRESA 2022-2023

(IT) Fondazione Ermanno Casoli ed Elica hanno ricevuto la Menzione Speciale CULTURA D’IMPRESA del Premio CULTURA + IMPRESA 2022-2023 – promosso da Federculture e da The Round Table in collaborazione con Fondazione Italiana Accenture e Ales / Ministero della cultura – per l’opera MARSHY, installazione site-specific permanente di Eugenio Tibaldi a cura di Marcello Smarrelli , realizzata per la XX edizione (2022) del Premio Ermanno Casoli a Castelfidardo (AN) nella sede di EMC FIME, azienda del gruppo Elica.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

5 June 2023
(IT) FECincontra Claire Fontaine

(IT) Vi raccontiamo qualcosa in più sull’artista vincitrice del Premio Ermanno Casoli!

 

Chi è Claire Fontaine? Artista collettiva fondata da James Thornhill e Fulvia Carnevale nel 2004 a Parigi, si occupa di temi politici, sociali e di femminismo e lo fa attraverso vari medium come video, scultura e neon. Le sue opere sono un manifesto e un invito a farsi domande, a interrogarsi, a mettere la realtà in discussione.

 

Cosa farà per il Premio Ermanno Casoli? Claire Fontaine è stata invitata a realizzare un’opera per l’headquarter di Elica a Fabriano che, come caratteristico del nostro Premio, sarà il frutto dell’interazione con le persone che lavorano in azienda: ispirata dal confronto sul tema dell’empowerment femminile con un gruppo di 30 donne, l’opera sarà un omaggio al valore che ciascuna di esse porta ogni giorno nella dimensione lavorativa e personale.

 

Seguiteci sui nostri social per scoprire insieme le opere più emblematiche della ricerca di Claire Fontaine.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

26 April 2023
(IT) PREMIO ERMANNO CASOLI XXI EDIZIONE

(IT) La Fondazione Ermanno Casoli annuncia l’artista vincitrice del Premio Ermanno Casoli 2023: l’importante riconoscimento nel campo dell’arte contemporanea in Italia è stato assegnato a Claire Fontaine, artista collettiva fondata a Parigi nel 2004 da Fulvia Carnevale e James Thornhill. 

Come dichiara Marcello Smarrelli, Direttore Artistico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli: “Claire Fontaine ha da sempre unito la riflessione teorica alla pratica artistica e il suo lavoro rappresenta un unicum nel mondo dell’arte contemporanea. La poetica di Claire Fontaine, sfruttando parole e immagini espressive, dialoga in maniera critica con il sistema politico, economico e culturale contemporaneo creando uno spazio di libertà che risveglia la coscienza individuale”.  

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

21 April 2023
(IT) FECincontra Cristiana Colli, direttrice della rivista Mappe

(IT) Quando un’azienda decide di impegnarsi in settori diversi da quello strettamente legato al suo business, i risultati non possono che essere un successo!

 

Abbiamo parlato di questo con Cristiana Colli, direttrice di Mappe, rivista di architettura prodotta dall’azienda di arredamento ed edilizia Gagliardini.

 

«Una scelta pionieristica, quella dell’azienda. La rivista è un esempio di sviluppo d’impresa a traino culturale che ha messo insieme missione economica, reputazione e responsabilità sociale. Una scelta strategica, tanto che ha permesso il rafforzamento della comunità aziendale, accresciuto la formazione ed espanso lo stock cognitivo in un orizzonte professionale fatto di competenze, visioni, relazioni.»

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

17 April 2023
(IT) MARSHY è nella Short List del Premio CULTURA + IMPRESA 2022-2023

(IT) MARSHY, l’opera realizzata dall’artista Eugenio Tibaldi per la XX edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli a cura di Marcello Smarrelli, è stata inserita nella Short List dei Progetti finalisti del Premio CULTURA + IMPRESA 2022-2023, composta dai 22 progetti più meritevoli selezionati tra gli oltre 130 candidati. Il premio – promosso da Federculture e da The Round Table, in collaborazione con Fondazione Italiana Accenture e Ales/Ministero della Culturaè dedicato ai migliori progetti in Italia che vedono la collaborazione tra istituzioni culturali e aziende nell’ambito di sponsorizzazioni, partnership e produzioni culturali d’impresa. 

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

1 March 2023
(IT) Il metodo FEC all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna

(IT) Mercoledì 8 marzo il Direttore Artistico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, Marcello Smarrelli sarà ospite al ciclo di incontri Panopticon | Rivisitazioni a cura del Professore Simone Pellegrini presso l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna.

 

Il progetto vede la partecipazione di professionisti del settore artistico che forniranno agli studenti e agli interessati punti di vista, strategie, modalità di attivazione e registrazione della contemporaneità.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

23 February 2023
(IT) FECincontra Chiara Paolino

(IT) Intervista a Chiara Paolino, una delle tre firme del volume della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli Innovating Business with Art, edito da Egea. 

 

“Il fatto che l’artista possa esprimere un lavoro complesso, legato alla sua produzione e poetica in modo autentico e che questo lavoro non si fermi entro le mura dell’impresa ma scateni una relazione tra impresa, organizzazioni del territorio e sistema dell’arte. Credo sia questa la cifra distintiva del metodo della FEC.” 

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

13 February 2023
(IT) L’AMORE BRULICA: FABRIZIO SARTORI x FEC per celebrare l’amore

(IT) La Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presenta L’amore brulica, un progetto realizzato dall’artista Fabrizio Sartori per i canali social della FEC, per celebrare quel sentimento fondamentale che ci tiene in vita, la più grande forza motrice dell’universo: l’amore.

A partire dal 14 febbraio, giorno di San Valentino, e nei giorni seguenti, sugli account della Fondazione saranno pubblicati dei brevi video creati dall’artista in cui un flusso di coscienza rapido e spontaneo elenca e definisce i “moti” che l’amore produce, tutto quello che l’amore fa.

Seguiteci sui nostri profili Instagram e Facebook per scoprirli.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

20 December 2022
(IT) GREETINGS BY EUGENIO TIBALDI

(IT) Eugenio Tibaldi, Marshy, 2022

 

We wish you a Marshy Christmas!

 

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

22 November 2022
IRIDE BY GIANLUCA MALGERI AT IIC OF TOKYO FOR THE 20 YEARS OF ARIAFINA

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. 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.

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.

3 October 2022
(IT) INAUGURATA MARSHY di Eugenio Tibaldi | Premio Ermanno Casoli 2022 | XX edizione

(IT) Domenica 2 ottobre 2022 è stata inaugurata MARSHY, opera d’arte ambientale permanente di Eugenio Tibaldi, vincitore della XX edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli, a cura di Marcello Smarrelli. Un progetto site specific realizzato per EMC FIME di Castelfidardo (AN), azienda del gruppo Elica, che ha visto coinvolti non solo i dipendenti della divisione motori, ma anche tutto il mondo Elica con la sua piattaforma produttiva articolata in sette siti tra Italia, Polonia, Messico e Cina, per un totale di oltre 3.200 lavoratori.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

5 September 2022
(IT) E-STRAORDINARIO for kids #8 con Marta Roberti

(IT) Giovedì 8 settembre 2022 torna E-STRAORDINARIO FOR KIDS, il workshop curato da Marcello Smarrelli e organizzato dalla Fondazione Ermanno Casoli in collaborazione con Elica, leader globale nella produzione di cappe e piani aspiranti da cucina, dedicato ai bambini dai 7 ai 10 anni, figli dei dipendenti dell’azienda marchigiana.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

23 August 2022
(IT) FECincontra Marcello Smarrelli

(IT) Intervista a Marcello Smarrelli, direttore artistico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli e una delle tre firme del nuovo volume Innovating Business with Art, edito da Egea.

 

Da storico dell’arte non potevo non considerare come il ruolo di formatore sia insito nella natura stessa degli artisti, dove il più esperto introduce i più giovani ai rudimenti di un mestiere che prevede grandi doti imprenditoriali, straordinaria manualità ed immensa cultura“.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

5 August 2022
(IT) PREMIO ERMANNO CASOLI XX EDIZIONE

(IT) Il vincitore della XX edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli è Eugenio Tibaldi (Alba, 1977) che realizzerà MARSHY, un progetto site specific per EMC FIME di Castelfidardo (AN), azienda del gruppo Elica, e vedrà coinvolti non solo i dipendenti della divisione motori ma anche tutto il mondo
Elica, che ha una piattaforma produttiva articolata in sette siti tra Italia, Polonia, Messico e Cina, e che annovera oltre 3.200 lavoratori.

L’opera, a cura di Marcello Smarrelli, sarà inaugurata nell’autunno 2022.

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30 June 2022
FECincontra Deborah Carè

(IT) Intervista a Deborah Caré, una delle tre firme del nuovo volume della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli Innovating Business with Art, edito da Egea.

 

“Un risultato che abbiamo sperimentato, portando gli artisti in azienda, è che l’arte contemporanea contribuisce a scardinare i paradigmi di un modo di fare e pensare precostituito, permettendo alle persone di sviluppare un pensiero nuovo e originale.”

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

8 June 2022
INNOVATING BUSINESS WITH ART

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presents the volume Innovating Business with Art, an English version of the book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, published by Egea.

 

“Their findings enrich our understanding and offer new avenues for future work, in which I sincerely hope that the next generation of researchers will tread with courage and curiosity alongside artists, workers, managers, engaging organizations like those described in this book. May they also have the good fortune of working with as generative and far-sighted a partner as the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli”. Ariane Berthoin Antal

With a preface by Ariane Berthoin Antal – WZB Berlin Social Science Center, the volume is written by Chiara Paolino – associate professor of Business Organization at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and professor of Leadership, Organization and HR at SDA Bocconi School of Management (for the theoretical part), Deborah Carè – Chief Human Resources Officer of Elica and FEC director from 2009 to 2017 (for the managerial part), Marcello Smarrelli – art historian and artistic director of FEC (for the artistic and curatorial part).

The volume aims to spread good practices in organizing artistic interventions in businesses by discussing the most current theoretical approaches on the relationship between art and business. For this reason it is aimed at both the managerial and the artistic community, with the intention of creating an authentic dialogue for the common benefit, analyzing the application of the ‘method’ developed by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, in its ten-year experience, within important Italian companies, in comparison with similar methods adopted internationally.

The artistic interventions published in the book have been selected from among the many created by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli Foundation because they are functional to the managerial topics dealt with.

For this international edition, a new theme has been elaborated concerning the artistic interventions that Fondazione Ermanno Casoli organized before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This last development of the volume is functional to reflect on the value of collaboration between art and business during crises and on the problems that art can raise in the workplace during an emergency such as the one we are experiencing.

The book is available in all bookstores and on www.egeaeditore.it

31 May 2022
Supporting art is an easy business!

Your 5×1000 POSSIBILITIES!
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20 December 2021
GREETINGS BY DAVIDE MANCINI ZANCHI

“A small town like any other, it’s Christmas time, at the beginning of the main street, the usual Christmas illuminations.
Christmas is always the same, like every year… A little happy, a little boring. But something has changed and the writing seems to have undergone a metamorphosis.
Merry Christmas has become Merry Greenmass, mingling with the infamous Green Pass.
The daily hammering on the news and the debates about vaccines, covid 19 test and NHS COVID Pass have not spared the Holy Christmas, confusing even the manufacturers of illuminations who, who knows how, have mistakenly composed the writing.” Davide Mancini Zanchi

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29 November 2021
JORGE SATORRE wins the 19th Ermanno Casoli Award

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Elica are pleased to announce that the winner of the Ermanno Casoli Prize –which has reached its 19th edition and is for the first time held at the ElicaMex headquarters in Querétaro, Mexico– is Mexican artist Jorge Satorre. Satorre joins the world of Elica with the project Pelusa, which will be shown in an exhibition curated by Francesco Pedraglio and Marcello Smarrelli, that will open on December 7, 2021 at the ElicaMex plant in Querétaro. The work is the result of an articulated process that involved over 70 ElicaMex employees through drawing, engraving and sculpture.

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.

30 June 2021
SATURDAY 3th of JULY INAUGURATES ZONA CONCE with the collaboration of the FEC

The FEC is taking part in the opening event of Fabriano’s ZONA CONCE, the new cultural centre born out of the requalification of the former tannery buildings that, on 3 July, will host artists, exhibitions, workshops and guests from all over Italy for an opening event that will also enable people to meet and interact.

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

16 February 2021
AVERE FAME DI VENTO. FABRIZIO CRISA’ DESIGNER

HUNGRY FOR WIND. FABRIZIO CRISÀ DESIGNER

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.

A collaboration with Elica to tell, through images, colours, words and numbers, 50 years of design and innovation.

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.

18 December 2020
GREETINGS BY MATTEO FATO | NATALE 2020

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.

Gianni Garrera

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

4 December 2020
MATTEO FATO FOR THE CONTEMPORARY DAY

5th December 5, 2020

Matteo Fato for the day of the contemporary, the great annual event, promoted by AMACI, which celebrates contemporary art by encouraging the participation of as many subjects and realities as possible to strongly promote and bring out the network of contemporary, national and international.

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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15 October 2020
MATTEO FATO | ERMANNO CASOLI PRIZE 18th edition

OPENING
Matteo Fato with 159 Elica employees, Gentili come un ritratto, 2020 (circa)
20 October at 12 am
via Ermanno Casoli, 2
Fabriano (AN)

Matteo Fato won the 18th 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 50th 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

 

15 September 2020
MATTEO FATO | Studio visit per GENTLE AS A PORTRAIT

The artist Matteo Fato lets us enter in his studio telling us about the portrait through his works. The video was made for the GENTILE COME UN PORTRAIT project – curated by Marcello Smarrelli – conceived as part of the 50th anniversary of Elica, which starts from the presumed self-portrait of Gentile da Fabriano in the altarpiece of the Adorazione dei Magi (1423) to recompose , thanks to the mark left on the canvas by each participant, a new, metaphorical portrait, a collective image of the company.

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 16th 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.

 

 

1 July 2020
GENTILE COME UN RITRATTO by Matteo Fato

GENTILE COME UN RITRATTO is the project by artist Matteo Fato, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, conceived for the E-STRAORDINARIO – FEC training programme with contemporary art, as part of Elica’s 50th anniversary.

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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12 May 2020
#LaCreativitaNonSiFerma #Grazie #RipartireInsieme

At the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, we believe that creativity is the most important resource that humanity has and art is its greatest asset. This is why we asked the closest artists to tell us what they did in this period, what their thoughts and wishes were during these long days of isolation. We have collected the contributions they sent us on our Youtube channel that we invite you to visit. THANKS to the artists who generously responded to our invitation. Now it’s time to restart, all together!

18 March 2020
MASS AGE, MESSAGE, MESS AGE (Elica 2018): Elena Mazzi’s picture story in collaboration with Boîte

Elena Mazzi talks about her project for Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli in this limited-edition publication, produced by the artist herself in collaboration with Boîte. Inside the book, you will find a conversation between Marcello Smarrelli, curator of the project and FEC Artistic Director, and the winner of the XVII edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli award.

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.

 

16 December 2019
HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOUR LAST TRUE WISH? | Greetings by Leonardo Petrucci

Desirescope was born from the North Star, which has always been a point of reference for travelers on Earth. It is an ideal telescope created to find our deepest wishes lost in the meanders of everyday life: who knows if looking through it will helps us to not lose ourselves anymore.

 

Leonardo Petrucci, Desirescope, 2019

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.

16 September 2019
The benefits of art within the company. Casoli and Smarrelli guests in Fano

Friday, September the 20th in Fano, Francesco Casoli – Elica’s President and Marcello Smarrelli – FEC artistic director, will be guests of the Center for Economics and Territory Studies to talk about FEC activity and to discuss the working Method born of decades of experience, which documents the effectiveness of the collaboration between art and business.

5 September 2019
INNOVATING ENTERPRISES THROUGH ART

HOW CAN CONTEMPORARY ART GENERATE INNOVATION IN THE COMPANY?

In this book, through FEC projects with artists, trainers and companies, the authors articulate a working Method, born from a decade of experience in the field, which documents the effectiveness of the collaboration between the art world and the business company world.

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

ENJOY THE READING!

19 August 2019
E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids #7 with Bianco-Valente

In September, the appointment with E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids # 7 will returns. This year with Bianco-Valente and their workshop “The place where I live”, curated by Marcello Smarrelli.  Stay tuned!!

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

10 July 2019
ART DAY: the cultural journey through the main places of contemporary art

ART DAY Pesaro is the cultural journey conceived and curated by our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli, at the main places of contemporary art in Pesaro City, part of a larger training program developed by Elica that aims to include junior resources in the Company by providing them all the tools to move effectively within a multinational and extremely complex context like that of Elica.

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.

10 June 2019
Smarrelli partecipates at “The sustainable city” for the UNESCO CREATIVE CITIES CONFERENCE 2019

On Wednesday 12th of June 2019, our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli will take part at the meeting entitled “The sustainable city. Bank’s foundations  for a new reality”, offered entirely by the world of Foundations. The event, curated by Fondazione Carifac and open to the public, is part of  the UNESCO CREATIVE CITIES CONFERENCE 2019 programm and it will be held starting at 15.00 at the Oratorio della Carità of Fabriano.

www.unescofabriano2019.org

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.

20 May 2019
(IT) Il Presidente Elica Francesco Casoli e Il direttore artistico FEC Marcello Smarrelli insieme al Rotary Club di Pesaro

(IT) Martedì 14 Maggio, ospiti del Rotary Club di Pesaro presso il Grand Hotel Vittoria, Marcello Smarrelli e Francesco Casoli hanno dialogato sull’interazione tra il mondo dell’arte e quello dell’impresa, presentando i benefici della FEC su Elica e evidenziando l’importanza che il ruolo del curatore ricopre nella progettazione e nella realizzazione di interventi artistici in azienda.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

14 May 2019
Marcello Smarrelli leads the artist talk with Nicola Samorì

On Tuesday, 14th of May, our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli will conduct the talk “The form of error” with the artist Nicola Samorì at the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts.

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.

12 May 2019
ISTAO Ancona: meeting with the Cultural Heritage Master students

Marcello Smarrelli meets the Cultural Heritage Master student, a course of studies that is part of the ISTAO – Istituto Adriano Olivetti Institute’s educational offer.

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.

9 May 2019
HAND#4 di Francesca Grilli: the collaboration with UNICATT continues

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 will be held tomorrow with the Master’s students in Arts Management Master.

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.

9 May 2019
Appointments with ingenious. At the LUISS Carlo Guidi, FEC and Elica with exceptional guests

On Monday, the 6th of May in Villa Blanc in Rome, our artistic director Marcello Smarrelli and Elica President Francesco Casoli participated, being part of  an  exceptional guests group, at Appointments with ingenious. Art over the centuries: the reasons for an Italian success, the important conference organized by Luiss Guido Carli with the aim of enhancing Italian excellence in the art sector.

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9 May 2019
Supporting art is a business! Donate your 5×1000

Your 5×1000 POSSIBILITIES!
Support contemporary art, donate C.F. 91029340428

3 April 2019
OPENING The Relay by Patrick Tuttofuoco | Ermanno Casoli Award 20th special edition

THE RELAY
by Patrick Tuttofuoco
Premio Ermanno Casoli
20th-anniversary Special Edition
Curated by Marcello Smarrelli
OPENING
SATURDAY 13th APRIL | 5:00 pm | SERRA SAN QUIRICO
Santa Lucia monumental complex

The Premio Ermanno Casoli is celebrating its 20th anniversary: the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli foundation is inaugurating a special edition of the Prize on Saturday 13th 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).

WATCH THE TEASER

7 March 2019
SAVE THE DATE | 13 aprile 2019 | THE RELAY by Patrick Tuttofuoco

Hands that give, hands that receive, hands that become the metaphor of exchange, of the gift, of the prize, of the feelings that bind human beings, hands that follow one after the other, like the generations, like life itself. Stay tuned!

28 February 2019
Alba Rotary Club: a talk to define the role of art as a fulcrum to innovate the company

Elica President Francesco Casoli, FEC Artistic Director Marcello Smarrelli and Prof. Chiara Paolino in dialogue at the Rotary Club of Alba, to define the role of art as a fulcrum to innovate the company: a bet born in 2007 in Fabriano, with the creation of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, a pioneer in investigating the potential of the dialogue between art and business and in proposing increasingly structured and specialized activities in that direction, able to make these two worlds interact respecting the mutual goals.

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.

1 February 2019
Smarrelli in Pescara to tell how art innovates the company

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. Focusing the meeting’s topic dedicated to corporate collecting, with case-history on private and corporate collection, Marcello Smarrelli presents the book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli” (Innovating the company with art. The method of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation).

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.

29 January 2019
Artistic director Marcello Smarrelli guest at the meeting “Imagine the present. Cultures. Design. Companies” at the MACRO Museum in Rome

The co / workshop at the Macro Museo D’Arte Contemporanea in Rome for building the future of artistic education, is organized by Cians (Coordination of non-state Afam institutions)and intends to represent a turning point in the programming of national artistic education. Tuesday, January the 29th, starting at 10am, at the Macro Museum of Rome in Via Nizza 138.

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.

13 December 2018
BEE REALISTIC ASK THE IMPOSSIBLE | Greetings by Pietro Ruffo

“I imagined Italy as a staircase in the middle of the Mediterranean, over which different peoples have historically climbed, in different historical periods, to then go to Europe. This episode that continues inexorably, has allowed the meeting between different peoples who made our country unique. ”

 

Pietro Ruffo, Italy of migration, 2018

13 November 2018
Opening “Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018)” by Elena Mazzi
Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018)
Elena Mazzi and 20 Elica employees
Ermanno Casoli Prize 2018
curated by Marcello Smarrelli
OPENING

THURSDAY 22th NOVEMBER | from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm

Headquarters Elica | Via Ermanno Casoli, 2 | FABRIANO

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.

29 October 2018
ARTISSIMA 2018 | Book presentation INNOVARE L’IMPRESA CON L’ARTE. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

Presentation of the book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Innovating enterprises through art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method)

Friday, 2nd November 2018 at 4 pm

ARTISSIMA – INTERNATIONAL FAIR OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF TURIN

“Oval” Pavilion – Book Corner via Giacomo Mattè Trucco, 70 – Turin

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

DOWNLOAD PRESSRELEASE

 

 

18 October 2018
The exhibition opening of Switch The Rules instagram contest
The most beautiful photographic shoots of the Switch The Rules instagram contest, promoted by Elica and the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, on show in Pastificio Cerere spaces as part of the Rome Art Week.
ROME | Thursday 25th October 2018 | 6.30 pm
Spazio Cerere | Via degli Ausoni, 3
The most beautiful photographs of Switch The Rules instagram contest, promoted by Elica and the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, will be featured in an exhibition, curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, at Spazio Cerere from 25th to 27th of October, during the Rome Art Week.
The contest challenged the participants to let their creativity run free and present surprising images on Instagram, capable of modifying the usual points of view, thereby achieving surprising and out-of-the-ordinary photographic results.
The most interesting and original creations, selected by an exceptional jury – composed of Cristina Casoli (President of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation), Francesco Casoli (President of Elica); Maria Claudia Clemente (architect, Studio Labics); Fabrizio Crisà (designer); Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Artistic director of the Malaspina Foundation); Rä Di Martino (artist), Marcello Smarrelli (Artistic director of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation) – will be exhibited during the Rome Art Week, an event dedicated to contemporary art taking place in Rome from October 22nd to 27th.
During the exhibition opening, the contest winner will be chosen among the finalists, proclaimed and awarded with a voucher for the purchase of photographic material.
Free entrance, we await you!
10 October 2018
Marcello Smarrelli – FEC artistic director – participates at the What’s Art for? What is the purpose of art today? talk

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, was launched at ArtVerona 2016 with Anna Somers Cocks, director of The Art Newspaper.

Friday 12 October | 12.30 pm | ArtVerona – Veronafiere

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

11 September 2018
ELENA MAZZI at the 24Ore Business School of Milan with MASS AGE, MESSAGE, MESS AGE

ELENA MAZZI at the 24Ore Business School of Milan with MASS AGE, MESSAGE, MESS AGE
Mass age, message, mess age with Elena Mazzi
Curated by Marcello Smarrelli
Thursday 13th September 2018
with the students of the 24 Ore Business School of Milan

Thursday 13th 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 17th 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.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESS RELEASE

4 September 2018
FAMILY FEELING by Patrick Tuttofuoco for E-STRAORDINARIO for kids #6

Thursday 6th September 2018
at the Elica headquarters in Fabriano
with 50 children aged between 6 and 10

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.

 

29 August 2018
TAKE PART in the #SwitchTheRules photo contest until 16th September 2018

Take part in the #SwitchTheRules photo contest launched by Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli!

 

Sometimes, to find the right inspiration, you just need to change perspective!

 

Until 16th September 2018

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 25th to 27th 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 16th 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.

FIND OUT ABOUT THE CONTEST

 

 

24 July 2018
E-STRAORDINARIO for ISTUD with Alessandro Dandini de Sylva

E-STRAORDINARIO for ISTUD Foundation

ACCIDENTI
a workshop by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Milan |Wednesday 25th July 2018 | Asap Hub

FONDAZIONE ISTUD at Asap Hub

On Wednesday 25th 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.

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE 

18 June 2018
ERMANNO CASOLI AWARD XVII EDITION
Elena Mazzi is the winner of the seventeenth Ermanno Casoli Prize edition with the project Massage, message, mess age (Elica 2018) which starts with an open talk with the artist and her public to be held on Thursday, June 28th from 5.00 to 6.30 pm in Fabriano, at the Elica Headquarters Auditorium Hall, via Ermanno Casoli, 2.
The seventeenth Ermanno Casoli Prize edition winner is Elena Mazzi (Reggio Emilia, 1984),  with her project Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018), which is part of a work-in-progress that the artist triggered in 2015, to highlight the dynamics underlying communication strategies. The project includes a workshop within the FEC activity E-STRAORDINARIO, which will be held with Elica employees in Fabriano, on June 28 th and 29th 2018, at the Company headquarters.  
The artist aims at analyzing the ways in which communication among individuals belonging to the same community, inevitably understanding their language, changes when it is interrupted by possible distortions and / or problems.
In line with her research, Elena Mazzi, assisted by the specialized corporate trainer Diego Agostini, from Commitment consulting firm, on Friday, June 29th, is inviting 20 Elica employees to directly experience the interruptions and distractions in which a message may incur when it is conveyed by a sender to a recipient.   The resulting work of art will be inaugurated in Autumn in the company headquarters of Fabriano, when the artist’s path relative to Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018) is finishing, after its beginning on Thursday, June the 28th, with the free entry talk in which Elena Mazzi will present her artistic experience through an open dialogue with the participants. 
  
MEETING WITH ELENA MAZZI
THURSDAY JUNE 28th 2018
FROM 5.00 TO 6.30 pm
 ELICA Auditorium
8 May 2018
Donate 5×1000 to FEC

(IT) Il tuo 5×1000 a sostegno dell’arte contemporanea C.F.91029340428

5×1000 for contemporary art C.F.91029340428

13 April 2018
Visonair by Labics curated by Marcello Smarrelli | Fuorisalone 2018

Elica and FEC present
Labics | Visionair
Curated by Marcello Smarrelli

 

16th-28th april 2018
INTERNI Exhibition House in Motion

 

Università degli Studi di Milano – Cà Granda
Via Festa del Perdono, 7
20122 Milan

 

 


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.

Watch the video

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

20 March 2018
Soon for sale the book INNOVARE L’IMPRESA CON L’ARTE. IL METODO DELLA FONDAZIONE ERMANNO CASOLI

Soon for sale the book
“INNOVARE L’IMPRESA CON L’ARTE. IL METODO DELLA FONDAZIONE ERMANNO CASOLI”,
by Deborah Carè, Chiara Paolino, Marcello Smarrelli
Preface by Pier Luigi Celli

A multi-voice tale on the art-business relation, focused on the ten year experience of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli.

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.

Free entry on a first come first served basis

26 February 2018
10x10xFEC – SISSI for 10 years of FEC

“There’s a number becaming a body when a geometry cancels the figure felling 10 into space”. Sissi

 

Sissi, 10x10xFEC, 2017.

 

 

Sissi enriches 10x10xFEC, the album celebrating  the 10th 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.

15 January 2018
10x10xFEC – FRANCESCO BAROCCO for 10 years of FEC

A new image by the artist Francesco Barocco – winner of the Ermanno Casoli Award XII edition –  enriches the album 10x10xFEC.

 

Francesco Barocco, 10x10xFEC (Untitled), 2017.
Grapithe on paper, 22×28 cm.

 

10x10xFEC is the album celebrating  the 10th anniversary of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. It is composed by the images of 10 artists, who personally interpret the number 10.

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.

14 December 2017
Enjoy Christmas by Vedovamazzei

“We were inspired by our workshop  for E-STRAORDINARIO for kids: Shaping the World in which the participating children, by playing with clay manipulation, have created and agglomerated forms, shaping a single large sculpture.”  (…)

“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

30 November 2017
HANDS – 5 tracks created by 35 Urbino ABA students with Francesca Grilli

Monday 4th December 2017, at 5 pm at Urbino’s Academy of Fine Arts (ABA) will be inaugurated HANDS, the sound pièce realized by Accademia’s students co-ordinated and supervised by Francesca Grilli,  created during the the working class called ‘Hand’ conducted by the artist last October at the Academy.

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.

1 November 2017
10x10xFEC – Anna Franceschini for 10 years of FEC

Anna Franceschini – the XIII edition of the Ermanno Casoli Award winner with Rock Paper Scissors – for 10x10xFEC, the album celebrating the first ten years of the foundation.

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.

26 October 2017
HAND by Francesca Grilli – The working class for the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts students with two public events

Monday 30th October 2017, from 10.00 to 12.00 a.m.
Conference | Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Modernising businesses by use of art. The Ermanno Casoli Foundation method)

 

Tuesday 31st October 2017, at 6.00 p.m.
Inauguration | Francesca Grilli’s  Faster Than Light (2015) video installation

 

Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino
Urbino, via dei Maceri 2

30th and 31st October 2017 will see the Ermanno Casoli Foundation and the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino present Francesca Grilli’s HAND, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, at the Academy headquarters. HAND, which is a working class for the students of the Academy, was developed within the framework of the Arte, tra antropologia e orientamento sinestetico (Art at the crossroads of anthropology and synesthetic orientation) project, launched in May 2016 by the Visual Arts Department and conceived by professor Massimo Vitangeli. This peculiar educational programme has seen the cooperation of curators and artists such as Filippo Berta, Angel Moya Garcia, Andrea Nacciarriti and Eugenio Viola, who worked on a series of activities aimed at involving participants.

Two public events will take in Urbino, at the Academy headquarters in via dei Maceri 2:

Monday 30th October 2017, from 10.00 a.m. to 12.00 a.m.
A conference entitled Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Modernising businesses by use of art. The Ermanno Casoli Foundation method)

with the following speakers:
Marcello Smarrelli, Ermanni Casoli Foundation Artistic Director
Umberto Palestini, Director of the Academy
Massimo Vitangeli, Visual Arts Professor

Tuesday 31st October 2017, at 6.00 p.m.
The inauguration of Francesca Grilli’s Faster than Light video installation (2015)

which will be shown until 30th November during the opening times of the Academy, namely from Monday to Friday from 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., and Saturday from 9.00 a.m. to 12.00 a.m.

 

 

13 October 2017
Corporate Collections in Italy: management, networking, prospects

Our Art Director Marcello Smarrelli will be the Round Table titled Corporate Collections in Italy: management, networking, prospects moderator.

Monday 16th October 2017 at 5 pm Piazza Venezia, 11 – Rome
Associazione Civita, Sala Gianfranco Imperatori

Organized by AXA ART Italia, in collaboration with UNICATT and Intesa San Paolo, the conference represents an important moment for discussion about the importance of corporate collections, an increasingly interesting phenomenon for creating learning and innovation both in managerial and artistic contexts.

With:

Nicola Maccanico, Vice President of CIVITA Association
Italo Carli, General Manager AXA ART
Chiara Paolino, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Laura Feliciotti,  Intesa Sanpaolo Cultural Activity
Lucia Tremonte, Lungarotti Foundation
Daniela Brignone, Historical Archive and Peroni Beer Museum
Cristina Remains, Senior Art Expert AXA ART

More info

6 October 2017
FEC participates in the Thirteenth Day of Contemporary Art

On Saturday, October 14th, FEC participates in the Thirteenth Day of Contemporary Art – the great annual event organized by AMACI to bring the art of our time to the general public – organizing guided tours of the Elica art collection.

Ermanno Casoli Foundation invites all Contemporary Art lovers to visit the Corporate Collection of Elica – its main supporter – that represents a way in which art enters the workplaces improving the working environment and getting the community used to the signs of contemporary.
Elica Corporate Collection results from the interaction between employees and internationally renowned artists. The artworks are fully realised during FEC’s workshops, in which contemporary art turns into an educational and methodological tool, contributing to improve working places and innovation.
Elica Corporate Collection is included into Global Corporate Collection (2015), a volume dedicated to the 100 best artistic corporate collection worldwide.

Guided tours will be available at 10 am, 11 am and 12 am on October 14th, for groups of  10 people maximum.  Reservation required no later than Wednesday 11th October by writing to: segreteria@fondazionecasoli.org

More info:
Cristina Terzoni
Production
+39 0732 6104257 | +39 345 6420254

 

27 September 2017
Our Artistic Director Marcello Smarrelli at ArtLab17

Our Artistic Director Marcello Smarrelli partecipates at ArtLab17,  testifying FEC’s ongoing commitment to the production and enhancement of contemporary art.

On 28 and 29 September, the last stage of ArtLab 17 will be held in Mantua, under the title Laboratori Culturali: the two planned days will be a laboratory, a real shared design exercise with the most qualified experts and industry professionals in view of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and its presentation at the Forum of Culture in December 2017 in Milan.

This year, as usual, ArtLab’s program will also be complemented with FattidiCultura, a promotional event at the 4th edition sponsored by Consortium Pantacon, which hosts reflections, comparisons and experiences related to the regeneration of physical and immaterial spaces in urban and non-urban contexts through languages of culture.

25 September 2017
FEC partecipates in the Corporate Art Awards

We are asking Ermanno Casoli Foundation friends to support us with their vote, until November the 15th, to win the Social Media Art Awards.

Vote for us HERE!

Thank you!

The Ermanno Casoli Foundation participates in the prestigious international contest Corporate Art Awards, 2017 edition, prize which identifies, values and promotes the best collaborations between both worlds, business and art.

The aim is to promote the best practices that link the business world and art, and to emphasize the importance of art as a profound expression of corporate social responsibility.

Support FEC and contemporary art with your Like!
Thank you!

31 August 2017
The Big Archive by Perino & Vele for E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids #5

The Big Archive by Perino & Vele

for E-STRAORDINARIO for kids #5.

On Thursday, September 7th 2017

Headquarters Elica, Fabriano with 80 children.

For the fifth E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids edition, artists Perino & Vele have conceived The Big Archive, a workshop that aims at building a temporary archive by overlapping wooden boxes, which are usually used to collect, ship, and deposit various items, from farming products to archeological finds.

By leveraging the symbolic value of these boxes, the kids taking part to the workshop – to which, with Elica employees’ children, will participate children from the Fabriano bilingual kindergarten Iris Garden – will be encouraged to create papier-maché objects, an old artistic technique that Perino & Vele re-processed; later, the objects will be arranged in the boxes, which will be piled and will compose a big archive, The Big Archive. On the front of the piled boxes, kids will draw an iconic papier-maché image, and will be aided by the artists.

The project has a preliminary step of cooperation between parents and children: they will have to collect any kind of paper material useful to build an archive: from newspapers to magazines, from medical prescriptions to ice-cream paper, from train tickets to shopping tickets, from comics to old exercise books. The idea is melting different materials that tell our life, which is made both of habits and daily gestures, and of reports or historical events, which often intertwine with our experiences, in a wider choral tale.

The workshop will finish with the installation and public opening  of the artwork The Big Archive.

1 August 2017
10x10xFEC – Ettore Favini for 10 years of FEC

“I combined, as in a carpet’s weaving project, all the artists who worked with FEC in these 10 years, everyone is represented by a colour and intertwined in the warp of the 52 year’s weeks.”

 

 

Ettore Favini, 10x10xFEC (Project for a Carpet), 2017

A new image by Ettore Favini, entitled “Project for a Carpet”,  enriches the album 10x10xFEC. The artist explains:

“I combined, as in a carpet’s weaving project, all the artists who worked with FEC in these 10 years, everyone is represented by a colour and intertwined in the warp of the 52 year’s weeks.”

10x10xFEC is the album celebrating  the 10th anniversary of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (2007-2017). It is composed by the images of 10 artists, who personally interpret the number 10.

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.

17 July 2017
10X10XFEC – Francesco Arena for FEC’s 10th anniversary

“10 as the fingers of our hands. My hand and my daughter Anna’s one. 10 fingers grasp and do. 10 fingers give a high 5. 10 fingers to learn to count”.

 
Francesco Arena,10x10xFEC, 2017

To celebrate Fondazione Ermanno Casoli’s tenth anniversary (2007 – 2017), we asked 10 artists to personally interpret the number 10.

The delicate and intimate image by Francesco Arena is illustrated by the artist: 10 as the fingers of our hands. My hand and my daughter Anna’s one. 10 fingers grasp and do. 10 fingers give a high 5. 10 fingers to learn to count.

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.

10 July 2017
10x10xFEC – Diego Marcon for FEC’s 10th anniversary

“The picture is a scan of the ten Ventolin’s packs I used from January to April 2017”.
Diego Marcon, 10x10xFEC, 2017

To celebrate Fondazione Ermanno Casoli’s tenth anniversary (2007 – 2017), we asked 10 artists to personally interpret the number 10.

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.

 

 

26 June 2017
10X10XFEC – Chiara Camoni for FEC’s 10th anniversary

“I observed the images from Il Grande Baccano, and lingered on a series of portraits of the post-performance resting instruments. In one of these, a rounded instrument reminded me of a zero. All I had to do was adding a one before it”.
Chiara Camoni, 10x10xFEC, 2017

To celebrate Fondazione Ermanno Casoli’s tenth anniversary (2007 – 2017), we asked 10 artists to personally interpret the number 10.

The image that Chiara Camoni came up with arises from one of the pictures that were taken to document Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang). Ovvero 763 strumenti per 763 bambini; this was a project that was carried out last year with kindergarten children and students from first and second grade from the three Fabriano primary schools. The project engaged 763 children.

The artist declared:
I observed the images from Il Grande Baccano, and lingered on a series of portraits of the post-performance resting instruments.
Every child, before leaving, placed their instruments on the square cobblestones. This generated spontaneous agglomerates, some of them were put in order, some others were randomly arranged: they created a bizarre and fluorescent still life.
One of these, a rounded instrument, reminded me of a zero. All I had to do was adding a one before it.

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.

12 June 2017
10x10xFEC – Danilo Correale for 10 years of FEC

Danilo Correale – the XIV edition of the Ermanno Casoli Award winner with The Game – for 10x10xFEC, the album celebrating the first ten years of the foundation.

 

Danilo Correale, 10x10xFEC, 2017

To celebrate Fondazione Ermanno Casoli 10th Anniversary, we asked 10 artists to interpret the number 10 in a personal fashion.

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

1 June 2017
CERTAIN THINGS is the book that collects and analizes Chiara Camoni’s works. It could not miss the project IL GRANDE BACCANO (Big Bang).

CERTAIN THINGS is the book that collects and analizes Chiara Camoni’s works. It could not miss the project IL GRANDE BACCANO (Big Bang), commissioned by FEC and curated by Marcello Smarrelli

CERTAIN THINGS is the book that collects and analizes Chiara Camoni’s works, from her beginning till now. The book was presented during the third edition of GRANPALAZZO 2017, an exclusive exhibition-event  taking place outside the usual contemporary art contexts, intended to encourage an authentic dialogue between artists, the audience and art professionals.

The book could not miss the project IL GRANDE BACCANO (Big Bang), commissioned by FEC and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, that was realised with  kindergarten, firt-grade and second-grade school students of Fabriano: a total of 763 children.

More info: Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang) – E-STRAORDINARIO FOR KIDS 2016

22 May 2017
HAND #2 A new E-STRAORDINARIO event with Francesca Grilli at Mudec – Milan

HAND #2. A new E-STRAORDINARIO event with Francesca Grilli for the students of  Sole 24 Ore Business School.

On Wednesday, May 24th, 2017 in Milan, at MUDEC – Museo delle Culture, a new event from the E-STRAORDINARIO workshop cycle curated by Marcello Smarrelli will take place; its protagonist will be Francesca Grilli, an internationally known first-level artist.

On this occasion, FEC proposes to the Master in Economics and Art and Culture Management students a project entitled Hand, which was already carried out in 2015 with a group of entrepreneurs and designed by Piero Tucci, M&D Senior Partner and trainer specialized in HR education and development. Since 2012, FEC has been partner to Sole 24 Ore Business School.

The project aims at giving an educational experience to students within a business environment, by analyzing its contents and modalities.

More info:  E-STRAORDINARIO – HAND di Francesca Grilli | 2015

8 May 2017
Donate 5×1000 to FEC

(IT) Il tuo 5×1000 a sostegno dell’arte contemporanea C.F.91029340428

5×1000 for contemporary art C.F.91029340428

27 April 2017
Danilo Correale’s The Game at Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona

On Wednesday, May 3rd, the Art + Business = Love (?) Festival, dedicated to the art-business relations, is opening with a double projection of The Game, at 7.00 pm and 8.30 pm, at Mole Vanvitelliana’s Aula Didattica in Ancona

 

The Game is the movie that artist Danilo Correale realized as he won the Ermanno Casoli Award XIV edition, curated by Marcello Smarrelli; the protagonists were more than eighty employees of three Tuscany-based companies – ColleVilca srl, PR Industrial Srl, and Trigano Spa. They played a three-goal football match, which is an unusual tool to overcome the competition mood featuring traditional football, by fostering participants to adopt a cooperative and aggregative approach. The projection will be replayed on May 4, 5, and 6 from 10.00 am at 9.00 pm; the entry is free.

On May 3rd, at 6.00 pm at Museo Omero’s Conference Room, Deborah Carè and Marcello Smarrelli, FEC’s art and organizational directors, will participate in a conference on the issue “ART FOR BUSINESS: arte e imprese per un Nuovo Rinascimento” (Art and business for a New Renaissance). Sebastiano Di Diego – economist and Network Advisory CEO, Alessia Tripaldi – Sineglossa Creative Ground art&business supervisor, Raimondo Orsetti –Regione Marche’s Tourism, Culture and Productive Activity Responsible will take part to the meeting. During the meeting, models and good practices will be used to explain the way in which competitiveness and innovation potential within companies can be increased thanks to artistic contributions.

Fondazionecasoli.org  | www.abfestival.it
Download the Press Kit| Watch the teaser

18 April 2017
10x10xFEC – Francesca Grilli for 10 years of FEC

Francesca Grilli, 10x10xFEC (Wheel of Fortune), 2017

Courtesy: Umberto Di Marino, Naples

“My passion for tarots and oracles led me to think about the connection between recent events and destiny fortuity, which is contained in the 10th Tarot Major Arcanum, The Fortune Wheel. I found this fantastic gaming station in Las Vegas, and I placed a bet “.

To celebrate Fondazione Ermanno Casoli 10th Anniversary (2007 – 2017), we asked 10 artists close to the Foundation to interpret the number 10 in a personal fashion.

Francesca Grilli launches the new Website, with the first image from the album 10x10xFEC.

Once every 10 days, images of invited artists will be posted in the homepage: Francesco Arena, Francesco Barocco, Chiara Camoni, Danilo Correale, Ettore Favini, Anna Franceschini, Francesca Grilli, Diego Marcon, Andrea Mastrovito, and Sissi.

6 December 2016
FEC remembers Gianna Pieralisi Casoli

If, as John Ruskin claims, art happens when hand, head and heart work together, then let us state that Signora Gianna was a real artist.
She will be deeply missed.

Goodbye President!

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) expresses its deepest grief for its own President and founder’s demise, Ms. Gianna Pieralisi Casoli.

FEC members and Elica employees liked calling her Signora Gianna. During her lifetime, which was scarred by her husband’s early passing, she turned her commitment and dedication to work into her distinctive features.
In 2007 she founded FEC, which since the very beginning has given insights and steps forward to foster projects that make contemporary art and the enterprise sector meet, by leveraging Ermanno’s strong spiritual legacy. In a very short time, it became a global reference for the topics it deals with.
During the years, thanks to her generosity, several artists have shared FEC’s values and participated in its countless initiatives.

18 November 2016
Marcello Smarrelli Pesaro Culture Consultant

Our Art Director, Mr Marcello Smarrelli, was appointed Consultant for Culture by the Mayor of Pesaro, who wanted him in his staff; Mr Smarrelli will work side by side with council member Mr Daniele Vimini in organizing and coordinating Comune di Pesaro cultural activities.

Our art director Marcello Smarrelli was appointed Culture Consultant; he will be working side by side with council member Daniele Vimini, in Pesaro’s Mayor staff. They will organize and coordinate cultural activities in the Pesaro province, as Fondazione Olivieri Pesaro Cultura will be established.

3 November 2016
ESERCIZI DI STILE #2 A new E-STRAORDINARIO event with Diego Marcon, curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) and Sole 24 Ore’s Business School confirm their collaboration for the fifth year in a row, with a new event of the E-STRAORDINARIO training program.

Thursday, November 10th, 2016, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) and Sole 24 Ore Business School confirm their collaboration for the fifth year in a row, through a new E-STRAORDINARIO educational program event. This will take place on Thursday, November 10th with the workshop Esercizi di stile#2 by artist Diego Marcon – curated by FEC art director Marcello Smarrelli – in collaboration with the education and human resources development specialist Luca Varvelli.

The workshop is directed to 34 students from the Sole 24 Ore Master in Economics and Art and Culture Management. It will be held in Milan at Pirelli HangarBicocca, which is an international reference institution for contemporary art. The shared goal is fostering contemporary art as a valuable educational and methodological tool for new professionals that can develop and add value to the Italian art “system”.

Artist Diego Marcon will be the main character of Esercizi di stile#2, which is the workshop title. This is a writing experiment that follows the one carried out in Fabriano in 2015 with a group of entrepreneurs from the Marche region. Participants will be inspired by the homonymous book by and they will be provided with a “basic anecdote” starting from which the will develop three variations related to the linguistic register, the literary genre and the text support. Participants – all Master’s students – will be working in groups; once the work is finished, every contribution will be included in an eBook, an artist book that will be handed out to participants. This project is perfectly in line with Diego Marcon’s poetics, which constantly questions the notions of reality and realism, and investigates the image and language status in the mass media era.

6 October 2016
DISGUISE by Yang Zhenzhong at XI Shanghai Biennale

We proudly announce that Disguise, Yang Zhenzhong’s artwork for Ermanno Casoli Award XV edition has been selected for the XI Shanghai Biennale, from November 12th, 2016 to March 12th, 2017.

The work that the artist created for the Ermanno Casoli Award XV edition has been selected for the XI Shanghai Biennale

We proudly announce that Disguise, the work that artist Yang Zhenzhong created for the Ermanno Casoli Award XV edition, has been selected for the XI Shanghai Biennale, which will be held from November 12th, 2016 to March 12th, 2017 at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, and is curated by Raqs Media Collective.

The Award is a commission that Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) gives to an artist to creating an artwork for a company, with the active participation of employees.
Yang Zhenzhong, as Ermanno Casoli Award winner, has been invited for a two month residency at Elica – a global leader in the production of hoods for household use –Shengzhou (China) plant. There, he held a workshop cycle that involved more than fifty employees, who created the installation that was presented during the Elica Show Room in Shanghai in May 2015.
The project title is Disguise and introduces its audience in a theatrical atmosphere, which is highlighted by a series of masks reproducing the involved employees, and was created by 3D scanning. Each mask was later worn by the very employees in a performance that took place within the company; the relevant documentation was later used to create a video installation.

“I asked employees to wear the mask they had created during the workshop first step through their faces scanning, during their working shift” – the artist tells. “The video shows the employees working and, simultaneously, staging the productive process. They express a kind of performative dynamic action despite they have to respect their roles’ rules within the company. With their faces covered by masks, their movements are always connected to the assembly line but, thanks to this metamorphosis, they acquire the grace of a freedom dance. Differently from what could be thought, the atmosphere during the workshop did not change the daily production potentiality; though, it turned it into a sort of theatre and added spirituality. Personally, this whole practice and creative procedure was a new extraordinary experience”.
We are cheerful that an international event such as the Shanghai Biennale, curated for this edition by a social-issue-sensitive artist collective, has chosen to present the work created by a group of employees within the E-Straordinario program, which is the educational path that FEC created to bring contemporary art into the business sector.

WATCH THE TEASER
More info on Biennial Shangai website

30 September 2016
Director Deborah Carè at ArtLab16 Mantua

Deborah Carè has participated in the ArtLab16 Mantua working roundtable, focused on the relation between Culture and Welfare. She spoke about Fondazione Ermanno Casoli experience and the benefits of contemporary art on businesses.

Thursday, September 29th, 2016

On Thursday, September 29th, our Director Deborah Carè participated in ArtLab16 Mantua and joined an interesting roundtable in which different public and private institutions representatives discussed on the relation between Culture and Welfare. They talked about their visions and experiences on the issue Culture and Healthcare aiming at triggering new cultural policies, creating strategic and multidisciplinary alliances to fostering welfare through a bio-psycho-social approach that deems the human development as part of prevention and care strategies. During this meeting, the Director spoke about the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli experience and about the benefits of contemporary art on the business sector.

ArtLab is an event organized by Fondazione Fitzcarraldo. It has reached its eleventh edition and become the main platform for cultural practices and policies innovation, through a structured debate with the creativity and culture system stakeholders. This year, ArtLab16 has developed through various events in Milan, Macerata, Mantua, and Lecce. In Mantua, the Italian Capital of Culture 2016, the ArtLab program was included into the FattidiCultura one, which is a similar cultural event for issues and audiences.

16 September 2016
VITRIOL Andrea Mastrovito and 100 Angelini’s employees

Artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978) won the Ermanno Casoli Award, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which has already reached its XVI edition and has always been the emblem of art-business contamination.

Friday, September 16th, 5:00 pm at Angelini A.C.R.A.F, Ancona headquarters

Artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978) won the Ermanno Casoli Award, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which has reached its XVI edition. This award has always symbolized the contamination between art and enterprise. The artist has been awarded with several prizes and is an important voice in both domestic and international contermporary art scene, due to his ground-breaking research, in line with FEC’s values.

The Ermanno Casoli Award XVI edition introduces a new aspect: the activities will be thoroughly carried out in the Ancona Angelini pharmaceutical plant and are included within an educational project arisen from the collaboration between the Foundation and M&D Company, which have worked together for years in different initiatives.

For this occasion, Andrea Mastrovito has conceived a path through art and education that he entitled Vitriol: this term – which is a Latin acronym whose meaning is well known to alchemists: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem namely “Visit the interior of the earth and purifying you will find the hidden stone” – has inspired the artist for the creation of a seven wall-work cycles within the company spaces.

More than 100 Angelini employees were involved in this educational path in which the employees were divided into groups and have contributed to Vitriol making, supported by the artist. This permanent artwork was specifically conceived for their work space. Artist, employees, trainer and curator developed their team work by discussing every step of the project – from its conception to its implementation. They worked side by side during the whole making process.

Mastrovito and more than 100 employees have made 7 wall paintings, by engraving the walls of 7 selected spots inside the plant; they have created a series of figures that were shaped through the pre-existing colors within the wall layers. A real space archeology was unveiled within the layers and in the passage of time.

For the work concept, the artist was inspired by medicine and pharmaceutics; particularly, he focused on the chemical process that turns an active principle into a powder to be used in the pharmaceutical industry. The project hint arises from the artist observing the chemical processes observation – complex and rich in steps – through which active principles powders are obtained. Finally, for this reason, the powders from the engravings were collected and exhibited together with the artwork, as if they were the “soul” of the wall-engraved figure, its “active principle” –, reconnecting to Angelini’s activity.

Vitriol will be presented to the audience, the press and the institution representatives on September 16th, at 5:00pm at Angelini A.C.R.A.F. Ancona, as a further testimony of the advantages brought by the art-enterprise interaction.

On the occasion of Vitriol opening, a whole process documented publication will be presented, with texts by Gianna Pieralisi (FEC President), Deborah Carè (FEC Director), Piero Tucci (M&D Senior partner), Marcello Smarrelli (FEC Art director) and Francesco Nucci (neurosurgeon and Fondazione VOLUME! President).

Entrance upon invitation or subscription at: segreteria@fondazionecasoli.org

Watch the TEASER

Andrea Mastrovito and 100 Angelini’s employees, Vitriol, 2016

Photo credit: Marco Tedeschi and Fabrizio Carotti

5 September 2016
SHAPING THE WORLD – Plasmare il mondo

Elica and FEC propose a new E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids event, in which game, fantasy and dream are shaped by working clay, the most classic of the “artistic” materials shared by art and craft.

A new E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids event with Vedovamazzei, curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Thursday, September 8th, 2016 at Elica’s headquarter in Fabriano

Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) have been promoting a new E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids event – an educational workshop cycle dedicated to Elica’s employees’ children. This has become a classic appointment before schools reopening. The project has reached its fourth edition and inspires to E-STRAORDINARIO, the educational program that FEC conceived to bring contemporary art into the business sector. It was successfully experimented in several companies and it revealed to be a valuable educational and methodological tool that is addressed to employee. Thanks to this project, FEC obtained several acknowledgments, including the sponsorship of the Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture and the Cultura+Impresa Award 2014.
One of the most famous couple in the art sector, the duo Vedovamazzei (Stella Scala and Simeone Crispino), will be the main characters of this new highly creative event. This will be held on Thursday, September 8th at the ELICA plant of Fabriano. Vedovamazzei has conceived a workshop entitled SHAPING THE WORLD – Plasmare il mondo, curated by Marcello Smarrelli. Seventy kids, aged 6 to 10, will be asked to reinvent their parents’ working place as an ideal creative space.

The workshop will be divided into three steps: firstly, a preparatory step during which participants will familiarize with the topics of working day and the material that will be used: clay. Secondly, kids will be involved into planning and creating their ideal factory and the relevant most suitable uniform; finally, a conclusive step will be dedicated to arranging the exhibition of their works.

Play, fantasy and dream will be shaped by handling clay, the most classic “artistic” material that art and craft share.
The workshop will develop in this lucid yet highly educational context; it will be carried out in the Elica headquarter of Fabriano, which is the company core and was chosen as ideal observatory to allow kids to familiarizing with their parents’ working place, by participating in their daily activities.

14 July 2016
THE WISHFULL MAP#4

In July, a new E-STRAORDINARIO event: The Wishful Map #4, the workshop that artist Pietro Ruffo has conceived for forty employees of the Distribution department of Euler Hermes Italia.

Tuesday and Wednesday, July 19th-20th, 2016 at La Borghesiana (Rome) sport village

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presents a new E-STRAORDINARIO event, a project curated by Marcello Smarrelli that has been bringing contemporary art to the business sector for years and has been using art as a methodological and educational tool for corporate training.
The new E-STRAORDINARIO event is entitled The Wishfull Map #4 and features artist Pietro Ruffo. It follows the one carried out for Angelini group’s pharmaceutical subsidiary (2015), the one for the students of Master in Art and Culture Economics and Management, held by Sole 24 Ore Business School (2015) and the latest one, for Bellegra (Rome) Banca di Credito Cooperativo, last June. These collective artworks are created with the company employees or students and are included in a wider program that was originated by the collaboration between Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Piero Tucci, M&D Senior Partner. Such program aims at creating a series of conceptual maps that reflect the values and the vision of businesses through their employees’ activities.

The workshop will involve about 30 employees among officials and managers from the Distribution department of Euler Hermes Italia, a Rome-based trade credit insurance company of the Allianz group. The goal is to strengthen the cooperation and integration spirit among co-workers and to stimulate knowledge contamination through the creation of a collective artwork.
The artist will begin from a very peculiar Earth projection inspired to De L’Isle Equidistant Conic one, which was sketched out by the French astronomer Joseph Nicolas De L’Isle for the first time in 1745.
The Earth projection will be divided into 24 wedges and each participant will be asked to work on a world’s portion and to choose a Country that they will analyze on the basis of the risk evaluation studies five main factors: economic risk, financial risk, commercial risk, political risk and business environmental risk. Every participant will transcript its analysis on the relevant world section by using colors. At the base of each portion, the emblematic characters of the chosen Country currency will be drawn.
During the two-day workshop, Pietro Ruffo and Euler Hermes Italia employees will create a map that will artistically revisit, in their shape and colors, the most common risk maps in which every color will match a Country’s stability level.

The final result will be a collective artwork, an artistic synthesis of Euler Hermes Italia Universe that simulates the conic shape of the Euler Hermes Roman headquarter entrance layout.

7 July 2016
Director Deborah Carè guest at the Soft Economy Festival

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (FEC) Director Deborah Carè joined the third day of the Soft Economy Festival, which was organized by Fondazione Symbola and took place on July 5th-7th, 2016.

On Thursday, July 7th, at Treia (MC) City Theatre, a meeting has been held with the public and private institutions stakeholders operating in the Apennines territory. They discussed the new territorial development dynamics and showed good practices examples. Deborah Carè, as Brand Communication Manager of Elica Group and FEC Director, presented the Fondazione’s activities and their benefits on Elica – a leader company that produces hoods for household use and is the main FEC sponsor.

Fondazione Symbola has committed for years to fostering a quality- and Italian excellence-oriented development model, through several activities that include the Soft Economy Festival; this fourth edition has been organized in collaboration with Consorzio Aaster, Comune di Macerata and the Universities of Camerino and Macerata; more than 120 speakers from the economics, academy, politics and association sectors have taken the floor during subject-specific roundtables, conferences and demonstrative moments. The Festival main topics were the strength of culture and creativity as development factors, the digital factor potentiality as innovation trigger and the Apennines as labs to discuss about the role of mountains in the Mediterranean region.

More info: www.symbola.net

24 June 2016
Director Deborah Carè guest at ContemporaneaMarche

Our director Deborah Carè joined ContemporaneaMarche, an event that took place on Friday, June 24th, 2016 at Centro Arti Visive Pescheria in Pesaro and was organized by Regione Marche – Culture Department with the purpose of promoting a dialog with institutions and contemporary art stakeholders operating in the Marche area; this has triggered a shared process for creating a network of the most interesting contexts that leads to building a precise contemporary identity of Marche.

By identifying ten sectorial categories, the Region authorities invited the relevant spokespeople to summarize a project proposal. FEC director, Deborah Carè, as the Foundations spokesperson, asked the Regional authorities to act as a bridge to fill the regional-international gap, and to turn into a reference for the different (public and private) stakeholders operating on the local level; this would allow them to interacting with the Italian Culture Institutes network abroad. Our art director, Marcello Smarrelli, coordinated the meeting.

More info: ContemporaneaMarche|10 proposte

7 June 2016
THE WISHFULL MAP#3 A new E-STRAORDINARIO event with Pietro Ruffo

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presents a new E-STRAORDINARIO event, a project curated by Marcello Smarrelli that has been bringing contemporary art to the enterprise world for years, by using it as an educational and methodological tool for enterprise training.

On Saturday and Sunday, June 11th and 12th, 2016 E-STRAORDINARIO will be held at Convento di San Francesco, in Bellegra (Rome), with artist Pietro Ruffo, who is holding a workshop entitled The Wishfull Map #3; this is directed to 35 employees of Bellegra’s Banca di Credito Cooperativo and will aim at strengthening the essential values representing BCC culture, by creating an artwork. The project is triggered by the collaboration between Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Piero Tucci, M&D Senior Partner, who is a trainer specialized in human resources training and development.

The artist will take a Fifties 10.000 Lire note and participants will redesign and magnify it. The resulting note will be turned into a map, upon which they will set, on verso and recto sides, several chromatic items: projections, analyses, forecasts and calculations from a hypothetical financial planning that the bank employees will hypothesize for a local business’ development and growth plan. Furthermore, this note has a strong symbolic value to Bellegra’s BCC: its thirty-two founding partners founded the Bellegra Rural Credit Cooperative back in 1959 by depositing 10.000 Liras each. This is how a pioneer company was established; one that laid the foundations of a modern bank that has been able to boost the economies of the high Sacco Valley towns, and has never neglected the related human and social aspects.

The final result will be the creation of a wide collective artwork, which expresses the work and the values of every employee of Bellegra’s BCC, as well as their territorial acting modalities. The artwork will be permanently exhibited in the San Vito Romano branch.

30 May 2016
Ermanno Casoli Award XVI edition

Artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978) gains the eminent Ermanno Casoli Award, curated by Marcello Smarrelli; the prize has reached its XVI edition and has always been the symbol of the contamination between art and enterprise. The artist had already won the New York Prize back in 2007 and had been invited to exhibit in high profile museums, such as MAXXI in Rome, Museo del Novecento in Milan, Manchester Art Gallery and MAD in New York; thanks to his ground-breaking artistic research, he is known within the domestic and foreign contemporary art scene.

This Award edition introduces a new aspect: besides being included in the E-straordinario training program, the activities will be thoroughly carried out in the Ancona Angelini pharmaceutical plant. This is possible thanks to Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and M&D training company collaboration.

The aim is involving more than 100 Angelini workers, who will be asked to create a permanent artwork along with the artist. This artwork will be specifically conceived for their working place. Artist, employees, curator and trainer will collaborate during the different project steps – from its inception to its implementation – and will be working side by side as they create the artwork, which should be finished before the summer of 2016.

Mastrovito conceived this work by taking inspiration from medicine and pharmaceutics; he focused especially on the chemical process that turns active principles into the powders used for pharmaceutical goals.

The project hint arose from the artist observing the complex and long chemical processes through which active principle powders are obtained. Starting from a recent series of works, Mastrovito – together with more than one hundred employees – will engrave the walls of some specific places within the plant. A series of figures will be engraved through the pre-existing wall layers colors, unveiling a real space archeology in the stratification and in the passage of time. The powders that will be extracted from the walls will be collected and exhibited as a constitutive part of the final work. They will represent the “soul” of the engraved figures, their “active principle” and the strong relation with Angelini productive activity.

Starting from Mastrovito’s inputs, the employees will engrave the walls according to a FEC-consolidated methodology that includes the mediation of Piero Tucci, M&D Senior Partner; his role is an essential one to facilitate the relation between artist and employees and to turn the creative processes hints into behaviors useful to the enterprise activities. Every person involved in the educational activity will be an active part of a shared and collective artwork creation.

26 April 2016
Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang)

Here you are Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang), a Chiara Camoni’s project curated by Marcello Smarrelli and realized by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli with Confindustria Ancona and Comune di Fabriano. This project is included within E-straordinario for Kids program and is directed to kindergarten and primary school first and second class students. It aims at encouraging the reuse of industrial waste, by stimulating children’s creativity and fantasy.

With the imperfect materials that Fabriano territory companies provide, 763 children from I.C. zona est Aldo Moro, I.C. Fernanda Imondi Romagnoli and I.C. Marco Polo schools created 763 percussion instruments that, directed by Chiara Camoni, will be played in a gradual crescendo during the public performance that will take place on Wednesday, April 27th at 10.00am at Piazza del Comune in Fabriano. They will produce a real joy explosion: Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang).

The performance video documentation and the instruments will be included in a wide installation that will open on May 7th, at 10:30am, at Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli in Fabriano. Visitors will be able to see it until June 12th.

14 April 2016
Art director Marcello Smarrelli at Contaminazioni. Manifattura, cultura e turismo verso una nuova sinergia

Our art director, Marcello Smarrelli, joined Contaminazioni. Manifattura, cultura e turismo verso una nuova sinergia (Contaminations. Manufacture, culture and tourism toward a new synergy), an event that took place on Thursday, April 14th, 2016 at Sala Caldart in Palazzo Doglioni Calmas, Belluno.

This meeting was organized by Confindustria Belluno Dolomiti and aimed at fostering and developing contamination paths between manufacturing companies and the culture stakeholders, as well as preserving and enhancing the landscape and artistic heritage.

Marcello Smarrelli participated in the roundtable about international art-enterprise synergy and spoke about the FEC experience and its relevant activities, which turn contemporary art into an educational and methodological tool improving working places and innovation.

15 December 2015
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s neons and Love Difference light up Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

On the occasion of end-of-year festivities, Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli present Elica Love(s) Difference: this project was conceived by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and the cultural association he founded, Love Difference, and is curated by Marcello Smarrelli, FEC art director.

On Thursday, December 17th, at 5pm, the installation will open. Elica’s employees and institutional representatives will participate. The neon writings composing the installation will be lighting up the Fabriano company’s headquarter façade for more than one year. The neon writing will be one: “Love Difference”, an invitation to respect and mutual understanding among cultures, a principle and an ideal upon which our societies should be founded. The writing will be translated into 12 languages: French, Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, Creole, Italian, English, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Croatian, and Hebrew.

This project strengthens and highlights the strong collaboration between Elica/Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Michelangelo Pistoletto/Love Difference, which was successfully started on the occasion of the Breathe Difference program, an initiative cycle that took place at the company Showroom during Milan Expo 2015.

7 October 2015
Deborah Carè guest at training course “Cultura, creatività, innovazione”

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli’s director Deborah Carè will join the training course “Cultura, creatività, innovazione – Creare valore con le industrie culturali e creative” (Culture, creativity, innovation – Creating value with the cultural and creative industries) which is sponsored by Regione Marche and Fondazione Symbola, in collaboration with PlayMarche Srl and Progetto DCE PlayMarche. The meeting will take place on Friday, October 9th at the University.

The course deals with issues related to knowledge acquisition and skill development for activating and strengthening innovation processes in communication, territory relation, planning, attraction and funding ability within the culture and creative industries.

On this occasion, Deborah Carè will speak about FEC latest year experience of bringing contemporary art to Elica, with the purpose of fostering remarkable innovation and research processes. Collaboration and work sharing among artists and employees enhance classic thinking schemes disruption and trigger mind flexibility, which is essential for developing new ideas that generate cultural and economic growth within the enterprise.

More info:  studiumanistici.unimc.it

 

24 September 2015
Pietro Ruffo, Pocket Museums

For the fourth year in a row, this workshop is curated by Marcello Smarrelli and is directed to the Sole 24 Ore’s Business School Master in Culture and Arts Economics and Management students. This year protagonist will be artist Pietro Ruffo.

The enterprise trainer Piero Tucci will attend the activity day, which will develop starting from the changes implemented by Italian Culture Minister, Dario Franceschini. As a result of these changes, directors and supervisors for the new Ministry mandate have been appointed. The workshop participants –the Master’s students – will receive an Italian Province capital city map each; students shall then identify a museum in that territory – a contemporary art one, preferably – and imagine they are their directors. Participants will have to choose the five guidelines for the museums they are directing; once they identify their “mandate” principles, students will draw on the city map the museum logo or outline, so as the city map overlaps the territory map, ideally embracing it. This image will then be finished through a highly symbolic coloring process: each color will match one of the five guidelines for managing the museum. In this way, the museum “values” will be visually defined. It will be possible to visualize and establish relations among museums, and offer a hypothetical mapping of how museums should be managed in the future.

23 September 2015
Marie Launch – Sillage edition

On the occasion of EXPO 2015, Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli chose to support Save the Children activities on education and food security. They did it by presenting Sillage, a project by artist Ettore Favini curated by Marcello Smarrelli, in the Save The Children pavilion. The project title comes from the perfume terminology: it describes the scent that perfumes leave all around us, which can overcome boundaries and spread to the surrounding environment. In line with this definition, Sillage is a four-step, constantly changing work in progress that gradually transforms and becomes abstract, until it turns into a perfume scent.

Firstly, Favini created some sculptures by using Elica’s hoods shells (Edith, Seashell, Audrey); secondly, 5 kinds of crops have been planted (barley, oat, almond, fennel, anise) inside the sculptures, which have been turned into “vases”; thirdly, the essences that had been growing for months thanks to experts’ knowledge, became a new scent for Marie, the Elica scent diffusor. As the final project step, Ettore Favini designed a special cover for the above mentioned diffusor: a still life deconstructed image obtained by taking a picture of the composition made of the plants that had been growing for the Expo six months. Therefore, Sillage is a complex project: a ground-breaking design product, an artwork, a tool to connect with the Save The Children issues and, generally, to EXPO 2015’s – Feed the Planet, Energy for Life.

The Sillage culminating point will be the launch scheduled for Wednesday, September 30th in Milan, at Palazzo Visconti: a fancy location where more than 150 Elica’s international customers, journalists and several other guests will be present; artist Ettore Favini and Save the Children representatives will participate, as well. Based on the inputs and state passages multiplicity that Sillage proposes, the event will re-create a multisensorial, multiform, and emotional environment.

31 July 2015
E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids #3

The third edition of E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids event will be held.

On September 10th, Elisabetta Benassi will lead children to a highly creative workshop. Benassi is an international known Italian artist.
Prototipi (Prototypes) is the workshop title, curated by Marcello Smarrelli: the event will take place at the Elica Headquarter in Fabriano, which is the company core center and an ideal observatory to allow children to getting to know their parents’ work place, by participating in their daily activities. The artist and her mini team will use the Elica prototype experts and designers’ “technical advice”. They will re-use the hoods produced in the company in an imaginary fashion. Children will be “prototype experts” for one day, and will provide the company with a new viewpoint on models, functionalities and possible use of the Elica’s products.

5 June 2015
Breathe Difference | Aria Nuova dal Terzo Paradiso

On the occasion of Milan EXPO 2015, on Thursday, June 8th at 6.30pm, at Elica Showroom of via Pontaccio 8 Milan, Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli will present Breathe Difference – Aria Nuova dal Terzo Paradiso (New Air from the Third Heaven), a project by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and the cultural association he founded, Love Difference. The project is curated by Marcello Smarrelli, FEC art director.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, who is a protagonist of the “impoverished art” movement, in 2003 wrote the “Third Heaven” manifesto and designed its symbol, the Nuovo Segno di Infinito (New Infinite Sign), which is a representation of the infinite mathematical sign. Between the two opposed circles, representations of nature and artifice, a central circle is inserted, representing the Third Heaven generative womb. This is the ideal overcoming of the conflict in which nature and artifice are opposed in the modern society. On the occasion of the exhibition, Pistoletto created a new version of Nuovo Segno di Infinito in mirroring steel, which will be hung inside Elica’s showroom, creating a reflection trick. The work, as the artist explains, “represents the Third Heaven generation, coming after the first heaven, nature, and the second one, artifice. The Third Heaven open project leads science, technology, art, and culture to bring life back to the Earth”.

Pistoletto’s work ideally introduces the issues that will be tackled during the rich program of workshops and meetings that will follow the opening, on June 19th-27th. They will investigate on the relation of mankind, environment, and natural resource exploitation, the EXPO’s core issues. The workshops activities result will be a collective artwork that visitors will be able to see from June 29th to July 4th from 10am to 10pm.

Elica’s space will be turned into a highly involving venue that invites visitors to make a special journey around the topic Breathe Difference – different feeding types. Elica has always been committed to Fondazione Ermanno Casoli in conceiving and promoting initiatives that bring contemporary art to the enterprise sector. Once again, it offers its contribution as a virtuous entrepreneurial stakeholder that is an example of how resources and skills can gain value thanks to the willing to grow.

Breathe Difference – Diverse forme di nutrimento (Different feeding types) is the program title and it will last one week, turning the Showroom into an environment for reflecting on topics such as food and the relation with the other; these topics are dear to Elica, which is a global leader in the production of hoods and in the treatment of household air. Due to this shared vision, Elica decided to make its showroom available to Michelangelo Pistoletto and Love Difference.

The program:

‘Aria Nuova dal Terzo Paradiso’
Opening: Thursday, June 18th, 6.30pm
Dialogue with Michelangelo Pistoletto. The artist will be chatting with Francesco Casoli and Marcello Smarrelli, and will explain the Third Heaven manifesto. Participants will be able to taste the Love Difference ice-cream, which was conceived by the artist and specifically prepared by Osteria la Villetta.

‘Aria di casa’
Friday and Saturday, June 19th- 20th 10.00am/5.00pm
led by Love Difference and snark – space making
This is an experiential workshop that investigates and co-generates the common features of household life, in their different components: welcome, care, creation, and memory. Participants will be asked to observe their own house from different points of view and to share their experiences of home living with the group. This workshop will be based on the co-creation methodology and will be open to 12 participants.

‘Cibo per essere’
Tuesday, June 23rd 6.00pm/9.30pm
in collaboration with Istituto Hoffman.
This is a meeting based on a study method that considers individuals as the totality of four parts: emotions, thoughts, body, and essence. Taste will be used to metaphorically anchor every experience; each part will be matched to a guided tasting. Max participants: 15 people.

‘MAKE+ responsive building for smarter living’
Thursday, June 25th 6.00pm/8.30pm
In collaboration with artway of thinking, Globarch, Open Quadra, KOOBOO Managment, and Xlam Dolomiti.
For the first time in Milan, MAKE+ is presented: this is a system that, based on X-LAM technology, de-composes and re-composes the living space and the building process, to meet the current demand of a truly sustainable construction industry: ecologic, cheap, evolutionary. MAKE+ explains its formula through a graphic narration performance, along an 8 meter wall, inside Elica showroom. Limited entries, reservation required.

‘Frattali e frattaglie’
Saturday, June 27th 4.30pm/6.30pm
This is an experiential workshop that was developed in collaboration with Ludosofici. The path is dedicated to children (3+ years old) and parents, max participants 25. The experience digresses on the topic of the creative evolution of the Universe and will produce an installation that will be exhibited until the project end. Limited entries, reservation required.

Download the Breathe Difference press kit here.

6 May 2015
Ettore Favini, Sillage

On the occasion of Milan EXPO 2015, Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presented Sillage, an Ettore Favini’s project curated by Marcello Smarrelli, inside the Save The Children pavilion; the project supports education and food security initiatives carried out by Save The Children.

The term “Sillage” comes from the perfume terminology: it identifies the scent that perfumes leave around us, which is able to overcome boundaries and spread to the surrounding environment. In line with this definition, Sillage is a four-step, constantly changing work in progress, gradually transforming and becoming abstract.

The installation is composed by a series of modular sculptures, which are inspired by the famous Endless column by sculptor Costantin Brancusi, and use three important Elica products (Edith, Seashell, Audrey).

Secondly, the kitchen hood shells are overlapped to create columns and will be used to grow food plants. Thus, constant state changes will take place inside the kitchen hoods: the metal modules will be turned into “vases” that will host a new life. The artist will put some plants inside them; these will be chosen in collaboration with architect Melania Bugiani, and used as a base for food such as barley, oat, almond, fennel, and anise. These are easily farmable plants, which relate to issues dear to Save The Children, and, generally, to EXPO 2015 theme: Feed the Planet, Energy for Life.

During the third step, the plants will be turned into scents by “expert noses”, which will create an essence specifically studied for Marie. As the project conclusive step, Ettore Favini will create a special cover for the above mentioned hood. A still life image, obtained by taking a picture of a composition of the plants that had been growing in the vases for the Expo six months, will be re-produced in a single colored strip that, as a colorful ribbon, will wrap the scent diffusor shell.

This version of Marie will be a limited edition for Save the Children with the new essence and will be presented during an event held in September in Milan.

30 April 2015
Yang Zhenzhong wins the Ermanno Casoli Award 2015

Ermanno Casoli Award spreads worldwide. The XV edition winner is the Chinese artist Yang Zhenzhong with a project entitled Disguise, curated by Marcello Smarrelli. The award is a commission that the Foundation gives to an artist to create an artwork for a company, with the active participation of its employees. Yang Zhenzhong worked for more than two months to a project in the Shengzhou Elica plant, and engaged tens of employees; the exhibit project will be presented at Elica Showroom in Shanghai on Saturday, May 9th at 5.00pm.

The project title is Disguise and introduces its audience in a theatrical atmosphere, which is highlighted by a series of masks reproducing the involved employees, and was created by 3D scanning. Each mask was later worn by the very employees in a performance that took place within the company; the relevant documentation was later used to create a video installation.

“I asked employees to wear the mask they had created during the workshop first step through their faces scanning, during their working shift” – the artist tells. “The video shows the employees working and, simultaneously, staging the productive process. They express a kind of performative dynamic action despite they have to respect their roles’ rules within the company. With their faces covered by masks, their movements are always connected to the assembly line but, thanks to this metamorphosis, they acquire the grace of a freedom dance. Differently from what could be thought, the atmosphere during the workshop did not change the daily production potentiality; on the contrary, it turned it into a sort of theatre and added spirituality. Personally, this whole practice and creative procedure was a new extraordinary experience”.

Disguise is based on a Lacanian approach connected to deconstructing identities and, at the same time, triggers a process that awakes individual awareness within the collectivity. The mask, which is a perfect copy of the employees’ faces, adds drama to their emotions and reaches an extreme ostentation. The slow motion choreography of mechanical movements that they perform at the assembly line, which is displayed in the video, unveils another aspect of the work. What is more real, the role they play or their identities? What reaction does this video trigger in the workers involved when they see their own performance? Nothing is certain during the production and every forecast can be turned into a new possibility.

The project outcomes will be exhibited at Elica Showroom in Shanghai, where the video and the 50 masks used by the workers will be displayed. The arrangement will include Elica products as well and will re-create the industrial atmosphere in which the work was shaped.

13 April 2015
E-STRAORDINARIO in Montefiore dell’Aso and conversation on photography in Ancona

Double event for FEC. Two initiatives have been scheduled in the Marche territory: the first one is taking place on Thursday, April 16th in Montefiore dell’Aso (AP), at Polo Museale di San Francesco; this is a workshop belonging to the E-STRAORDINARIO educational program curated by Marcello Smarrelli in collaboration with Piero Tucci, from the M&D Human Resources Training and Development department. Its protagonist will be Francesca Grilli, a high profile, internationally known artist that will lead a body reading workshop entitled Hand: starting from this suggestion, the workshop will focus on interpreting the lines of the hands, the body parts that are most used in communicating, creating bonds, working.

Firstly, participants will take a painting step, where they will learn, through colors, to draw the hand outline, in order to have an overall vision of every line. During the same day, the very hand will be studied: shape, color, softness, touch feeling, and elasticity. Later, the artist and a palmistry expert will coordinate a skill practice session, so as participants (entrepreneurs and start-uppers) can understand how a person’s personality can be represented by their body, by encouraging a more instinctive and free reading. During the workshop step, participants will tell their personal stories, as they create their handprints; every experience will be collected in a soundtrack that will represent the collective work that artist and participants created: this will be the workshop final outcome.

This initiative belongs to the CultLab activities – an Impresa Culturale spin-off managed by Urbino and Macerata Universities, as well as by Meccano spa in temporary association with scopo; it is promoted and sponsored by Marche’s local action groups (PSR 2007-2013 – Asse IV – Approccio LEADER – Misura 421 – Cooperazione interterritoriale e transazionale) consistently with the foundational principles of Marche Region’s “Distretto Culturale Evoluto”.

The second event relates to photography. On Friday, April 17th 6.00pm Terra di mezzo. Declinazione di una commissione fotografica (Middle Earth. Declination of a photographic commission) will take place at Grand Hotel Passetto in Ancona. This event belongs to “L’IMPRESA FA CULTURA” meeting program and is a conversation, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli art director, and Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, photographer and curator, with photographers Fabio Barile and Francesco Neri.

The event title is inspired by the Middle-Earth. A journey inside Elica project, which is a photo portrait of Elica that Barile and Neri produced in 2014. It was also presented on the occasion of that year Fuorisalone. Exactly 12 months later, the protagonists go back to the work they produced, as they talk about its main steps and focus on some of the most remarkable photo commissions by companies to authors such as Man Ray, Lewis W. Hine, Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Josef Koudelka, and Roe Ethridge.

31 March 2015
FEC art director Marcello Smarrelli guest at Florence LABA

Marcello Smarrelli, FEC art director, was invited at Florence LABA on the occasion of “Contaminazioni / Arte Contemporanea & Industria” (Contamination / Contemporary Art & Industry), a lecture cycle curated by Marco Montemaggi entitled “Scontri ed incontri fra Arte Contemporanea ed Industria” (Clashes and meetings between Contemporary Art and Industry). These lectures focus on the historical relation between contemporary art and enterprise, which has always dealt with the different approaches and topics that these meetings will tackle. Every lecture will be divided into two sections: during the first one, the subject matter will be defined, whereas during the second one, specific cases will be analyzed through “Case Histories” and “Best Practices”.

On Wednesday, April 1st will be introduced by curator Montemaggi, and will be held starting from 10.00am. Its title is “L’Arte prodotta dall’impresa” (The industry-produced art). Some industrial brands often produce either beautiful products, in which the artistic component is remarkable, or limited series that turn into exclusive items, and are often directed to collectors.

Marcello Smarrelli will be talking about the FEC for Factories experience, one of the activities which Fondazione Ermanno Casoli created an art-industry relation with; such thing introduces contemporary art into productive systems. Artists are invited to confront the creative projects that hide behind an industrial object realization, by sharing with designers, engineers, marketing staff, and specialized workers a project path to discover new languages and unexplored working methodologies. The artist’s intervention, actually, does not aim at creating a new product, but at leading a methodological innovation that could lead to conceiving new products, new procedures or original communication campaigns, according to interactions and contexts.

Specifically, Smarrelli will describe the project he carried out for Elica in 2012 with artist Sissi, which was presented that same year at Salone del Mobile. The idea, Aspiranti Aspiratori (Hoovers to be), was based on the company need of triggering new reflections on the air purification issue. The task of processing this concept was entrusted to the artist from Bologna, due to her courage, her endless creativity, her ability to transforming the things deepest structure. Sissi worked along with Elica’s employees and they created Aspiranti Aspiratori, ten ideas that participate in an audition for becoming air purifier someday. In 2012 Aspiranti Aspiratori gained an important acknowledgement, as it was selected by ADI Design Index within the “Ricerca per l’impresa” (pre-selection for the ADI Compasso d’oro). It was also the central portion of an exhibition and an educational workshop at MAMBO in Bologna: a double certification of the initiative value.

9 March 2015
Awarding ceremony workshop for the CULTURA+IMPRESA Award 2014

The E-STRAORDINARIO training program was awarded with the 1° prize in the section Cultural Sponsorships and Partnerships of the CULTURA+ IMPRESA Award 2014. Such program was conceived by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli to bring contemporary art to the enterprise sector.

On Friday, March 13th, 2015 the awarding ceremony will be held, from 09.15am to 1.00pm. Not only will this event be celebrating and acknowledging its protagonists, but it will also be a moment of information and confrontation on the dynamics that today allow Cultural Operators and Companies to effectively debating, through Sponsorships, Partnerships and Enterprise Cultural Productions.

Director Deborah Carè and art director Marcello Smarrelli will participate on behalf of the Foundation.

5 March 2015
Air Nouveau à Paris. Elica goes to Paris

Elica tells its story and presents Elica France.

The event will be held in a wonderful venue: the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris: a symbolic location that highlights the importance of art to Elica. Thanks to the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli initiatives, the company has been fostering an active dialogue between art and enterprise for years.

The new Elica products will be the protagonists of a sophisticated arrangement: “Miroir is the site-specific setting up project that the architecture firm stARTT has conceived for this occasion, on Fondazione Ermanno Casoli request. Miroir – as Marcello Smarrelli, the Foundation art director, explains – is a structure highlighting the geometry of the building that used to host the Talleyrand ministry. It triggers a poetical reaction through the illusions created by the trompe-l’œil. The mirror finishing generates a suggestive multiplication of columns, capitals, and the room golden plasters; this creates the visual trick of a “suspended” space within which the made in Elica products fluctuate.”

18 February 2015
E-STRAORDINARIO is back to Fabriano

On Friday, February 20th, at Museo della Carta e della Filigrana in Fabriano, the new E-STRAORDINARIO event will be held.

This meeting is entitled Esercizi di stile (Style Exercise) and is curated by Marcello Smarrelli, Fondazione Casoli art director; its protagonists will be artist Diego Marcon and Luca Varvelli, specialized trainer for human resources training and development. This workshop was conceived for a group of entrepreneurs from the Fabriano territory and the Pesaro-Urbino and Macerata provinces; it is included within the “CultLab – Spin off di impresa culturale” program, promoted by Meccano spa, Università di Urbino “Carlo Bo” and Università di Macerata. This project aims at networking cultural projects and the enterprise sector, by fostering development opportunities that this meeting can trigger.

Esercizi di stile, as the title suggests, is a writing experiment and is inspired by the homonymous book by Raymond Queneau. Participants will be provided with a short “basic anecdote” and they will have to develop three variations, according to the linguistic register, the literary genre and the physical support upon which they will re-write the text. Participants will be working in three groups; once the workshop ends, every contribution will be re-processed by the artist and will compose a fanzine in eBook format; this will be delivered to the students of Sole 24 Ore’s Business School Master in Economics and Management in Arts and Culture. This project is perfectly in line with Diego Marcon’s poetics: his work constantly questions the notions of reality and realism, as well as the role that languages play in defining them – by investigating the imagine status in the mass media era.

Luca Varvelli will guide the participants in an experience aimed at strengthening the innovative thinking, by using the artistic metaphor as an educational methodology. He will work on the value of changes and paradigm breaks.

22 January 2015
E-STRAORDINARIO wins the CULTURA + IMPRESA Award 2014!

E-STRAORDINARIO is the training program that brings contemporary art to the enterprise sector that was conceived by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and is supported by Elica, ACRAF and Gruppo 24ORE. It was awarded with the 1st prize in the Cultural Sponsorships and Partnerships section of the CULTURA+IMPRESA Award 2014.

E-STRAORDINARIO is sponsored by the Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture and has just gained a further acknowledgment. This confirms the success that this project has already obtained in several companies that have experienced the applicative value of this educational tool directed to employees to spread culture to the enterprise sector.

The CULTURA+IMPRESA Award 2014 jury, composed by professionals, scholars and researches, evaluated the candidates according to eight parameters:
• Innovation of objectives, adopted solutions, executive modalities;
• Strategy and activation of an integrated communication plan;
• Benefits to the Cultural project users and the Territory;
• Networking with Institutions, Media, Companies;
• Project economic sustainability and resources management;
• CSR campaigns integration;
• Results measurement modalities compared to both Partners’ achieved goals;
• Work opportunities creation for Cultural and Communication operators.

“We proudly accept this award. It is an acknowledgement not only for the innovation project, but also to a vision that many deemed utopian, namely melting culture, territory, enterprise and employment in a unique expression: art –Francesco Casoli, Elica and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli President claimed. Elica, today, is a sort of pioneer for this kind of activities, which can be implemented in other contexts, even at global level”.

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Elica, along with their partners ACRAF and Gruppo 24ORE, will take part to an awarding workshop that will be held in March in Milan.

15 December 2014
La cultura come motore di sviluppo: la Fondazione Ermanno Casoli c’è!

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11 December 2014
Musica da cucina, concerto-performance in azienda

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9 December 2014
La Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presente al convegno “Arte e azienda: le Corporate Collections in Italia”

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16 October 2014
Deborah Carè partecipa al convegno “Cultura e Creatività: innovazione, contaminazione e crescita per le Marche”

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22 September 2014
E-STRAORDINARIO per Business School Sole 24 Ore #3: Francesco Barocco, “Underdrawing”

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29 July 2014
Torna E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids: sarà Marcello Maloberti a realizzare una performance con i figli dei dipendenti di Elica

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17 June 2014
Deborah Carè interviene al seminario “Training Strategies for Hr leaders”

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6 June 2014
“The Game” premiere, a movie by Danilo Correale for the Ermanno Casoli Award XIV edition

Friday, June 13th, 2014

The Game is the title that artist Danilo Correale gave to the movie that won the Ermanno Casoli Award XIV edition. It featured more than eighty employees from three major companies in the Siena province –  ColleVilca srl, PR Industrial Srl, and Trigano Spa. They played a football match, half sport event, half performance, which took place on December 8th, 2013 at “Gino Manni” stadium in Colle di Val d’Elsa (Siena).

The movie was premiered on June 13th, 2014 at Siena’s historic Cinema Nuovo Pendola; it narrates the non-working time that the artist and the companies employees shared, during which a new way of producing contents and representations was experimented: from the very first meetings to the workshop steps, from the trainings to the surreal three-goal football match of December 8th. More than two months of debates, planning, and practice were turned into the narration of an extraordinary experience. The 75-minute movie was realized by using different footage formats. The diverse business stories and the various project steps were reflected with the purpose of engaging and getting the audience aware of a “different” working-class sector.

The Ermanno Casoli Award XIV edition activities were included in Pier Luigi Sacco’s project for nominating Siena European Capital of Culture 2019.

15 May 2014
Devolvi il 5×1000 alla Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

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6 May 2014
Deborah Carè interviene al seminario “Quando l’impresa fa cultura”

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17 March 2014
Middle-Earth. A journey inside Elica

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5 March 2014
Deborah Carè al convegno AnDS – Another Design Stuff, Comunicare il design

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5 February 2014
Marcello Smarrelli interviene a BUSINESS MEETS ART – Seconda edizione

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4 February 2014
FEC ed Elica partner del progetto Design-Apart, New York

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12 December 2013
Mano d’Opera – concerto–performance in fabbrica

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14 October 2013
Premio Ermanno Casoli XIV edizione, Danilo Correale THE GAME

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is pleased to announce that the winner of the 14th Ermanno Casoli Award is the young artist Danilo Correale. The initiative is curated by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of FEC, and is under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities.

The winning artist of the Ermanno Casoli Award is indicated by the artistic director and approved by the Board of Advisors. The Award entrusts the winner with a project that must relate to one or more companies and to its employees. Traditionally, the Award took place in Marche – where the Fondazione was born – involving the employees of the Elica Group in Fabriano, but this year’s edition will introduce a novelty: the Fondazione has in fact accepted the invitation to include the Award project in the series of activities supporting Siena’s candidacy to become the 2019 European Capital of Culture. The project thus covers an important role within a wide project whose aim is to “rebuild a new model of local development founded on culture, understood as a platform for social innovation, capable of deeply engaging the community on a path of change”, as explained by Pier Luigi Sacco, Director of the Candidacy and member of the FEC Board of Advisors.
In this context, the collaboration with Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, traditionally engaged in introducing art into the world of enterprises, was a natural development. With the Award, FEC in fact promotes the work of artists whose research is based on the interaction between different ambits, on the capacity of going beyond conventions and fixed behaviours, and on an understanding of art as an ethical model of behaviour, capable of fostering innovation in social and organizational ambits.

Danilo Correale’s project, entitled The Game, will involve the employees of three long-standing companies of the Siena territory: ColleVilca srl, specialized in the hand-crafted production and working of crystal by master-glaziers; PR Industrial Srl, a metalwork corporation, producing power generators and machineries for transportation of materials, and Trigano Spa, leader in Italy in the campervan sector.
Starting from a critical reflection on the dominant social model and on how the economic crisis is affecting every ambit of our society, from politics to culture, the artist’s research will focus on a form of aggregation capable of stimulating sincere affection and participation, beyond ideologies, competitiveness and rules to which we are usually subjected. Danilo Correale detects in sport, and in football in particular, a tension that has never ceased generating a sense of communion. He explains: “a football pitch is a metaphor for human relations. Pier Paolo Pasolini often referred to football as the last sacred representation of our times, understood as a ritual and an evasion. Football is performance, cinema, language; it requires improvisation, sensitivity and fair play, in an ongoing dialectics that flows throughout the ninety minutes of the game”. This project is part of a wider research path that started in 2011 in North Africa, where the artist studied the relation between rap music and revolution, and continued in Columbia, focusing on salsa dancing and protests.

The protagonists of The Game will be the employees of the three companies. The participants will be invited to give shape to the whole structure of the project – a football match with three different goals to score in – from the definition of the rules to the financial management of the event. This project will include a series of meetings with the artist inside a campervan with mobile office equipment, during which a number of aspects of the tournament will be discussed and defined: from the composition of the teams, to the game plans, to the choice of symbols and uniforms, to the organization of the supporter groups.

The idea of a football match with three goals derives from Asger Jorn’s theories. Jorn, a Danish painter connected to the Situationist movement, theorized a behavioural and linguistic model where a three-lectic confrontation would prevail, beyond the brutal two-pole antagonism, stimulating the cooperation and the formation of strategic and flexible alliances. The rules of the three-goal football game, necessarily played on a hexagonal pitch, will be open to being reinvented and improvised and there will be no offside nor unchangeable written rules.

The performative sports event will take place in December in the stadium of Colle di Val d’Elsa. The entire process will be filmed to become a medium-length film, which will be presented to the public in Colle di Val d’Elsa, in February 2014. The film will also be screened on the premises of the three companies involved in the project.
 

24 September 2013
Margherita Moscardini “Condominium”

The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli organizes a new workshop for the students of the fourth edition of the Master’s degree in Economics and Art and Heritage Management of the Sole 24 Ore Business School. Thursday 26 September, on the main premises of the Gruppo24ORE in Milan, the artist Margherita Moscardini conducts a workshop part of the E-STRAORDINARIO training programme, organized by FEC to promote contemporary art as an effective educational and methodological tool, capable of fostering important innovation processes in work and study environments. The initiative is curated by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of the Fondazione.

In 2012, Sole 24 Ore had already invited FEC to introduce E-STRAORDINARIO in the programme of its prestigious Master’s degree, with a workshop conducted by artist Marinella Senatore. The Master’s degree objective is to train professionals capable of developing and enhancing the Italian art “system”. Interaction, exchange and experimentation are the key words of FEC’s activities, inviting international artists to encounter corporate employees and collectively create a work of art or share an artistic experience with them. This collaboration proves fruitful both for the company, that can identify cutting-edge contents and languages which prove extremely useful in being ahead of the needs of a society in continuous evolution, and for the artists who can explore interesting new fields of expression. For all these reasons, the Business School and FEC have become natural partners in the promotion of an active dialogue between art and enterprises.

Margherita Moscardini’s research focuses on the relation between a place and the social reality living in it, and investigates the ongoing transformations affecting the space. On this occasion the artist presents a project entitled Condominium which she already carried out with thirty employees at MSD Italia, a branch of the Merck pharmaceutical corporation during the E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia, organized in 2012 by the Hic et Nunc coaching consultancy e curaded by FEC. The objective in fact is to involve the students of the Master’s degree into a programme designed for a company, tackling and analysing similar contents and methodologies.

The project is based on the concept of standard, “a model – explains Moscardini – that before becoming a convention, was a desirable model, a utopian ideal the communities could eventually benefit from”. Considering the utopian models adopted by enterprises, the artist brings up the example of the Village of Crespi d’Adda, built at the end of the 19th century by the entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi next to his textile plant, on the shores of the Adda River.

A small-scale perfect world where the owner “ruled” from his castle paternally taking care of all the needs of his employees. “What would be the ideal housing solution for the employees of a large corporation today?” This is the question raised by Moscardini. The workshop will start from these considerations and involve the participants in a practice close to a demonstrative simulation of a state of emergency: the outcome of this experience will become a book with relief images, a visual metaphor of a condominium.
 

15 September 2013
Andrea Zegna entra nel Comitato Scientifico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is pleased to announce that Andrea Zegna is a new member of its Board of Advisors.

Andrea Zegna – professional architect, graduated at the Politecnico of Milan, with his own studio in Milan since 1989 – has cultivated a long-standing passion for contemporary art.

Besides setting up a private collection, he is also involved in a series of initiatives for the promotion of cultural research: from the relaunch of the Premio Biella per l’Incisione (Biella Incision Award) founded in 1964 by his father Aldo Zegna and art critic Luigi Carluccio, to the public art project ALL’APERTO (http://www.fondazionezegna.org/all-aperto/), which he conceived and currently curates with Barbara Casavecchia for Fondazione Zegna. In 2011 the Ermenegildo Zegna Group entrusted him with the organization and coordination of the ZegnArt Public project (www.zegnart.com), in which he is a member of the curatorial team with Cecilia Canziani and Simone Menegoi.

He is also in charge of VISIBLE (www.visibleproject.org), an initiative set up by Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in collaboration with Fondazione Zegna, dedicated to contemporary art studies.

“Our purpose to carry out an ongoing exploration of the possible interconnections between the corporate world and contemporary art, naturally led us to Andrea Zegna, for his background and activities,” affirms Deborah Carè, director of FEC. “To support the dialogue between different disciplines – she continues – , and to promote art as a tool capable of stimulating a cultural and social development by introducing it into a corporate context, have always been the core objectives of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and its Board of Advisors”.
 

27 August 2013
Mario Airò “La memoria dell’elefante”, workshop dell’artista con i figli dei dipendenti di Elica

For the first time, the Elica Group and the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli present a project for children. E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids is dedicated to the sons and daughters of the Elica employees. The project will be led by artist Mario Airò (Pavia, 1961), internationally considered as one of the most important artists of his generation. Airò has been invited to develop a workshop for a group of 40 children, between 6 and 10 years of age. The initiative, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of the Fondazione, is part of the E-STRAORDINARIO learning project, conceived by FEC to promote contemporary art in the corporate world as an effective training and methodological tool.

The workshop, entitled La memoria dell’elefante (The memory of the elephant), focuses on the production and the use of paper, an industry that has always been linked to the city of Fabriano.

The workshop opens with a first educational stage during which the children will tour the Museo della Carta e della Filigrana (Paper and Watermark Museum) of Fabriano, followed by a laboratory session with a professional paper maker who will illustrate the different steps of paper production. Mario Airò’s workshop will take place in parallel, with the purpose of creating a collective work with paper that will be later set up in the Elica main premises.
With this project, Mario Airò intends to stimulate the children’s imagination, starting from paper’s material dimension and the creation of imaginary silhouettes inspired by a fantasy bestiary.
 

19 June 2013
Sissi’s Aspiranti Aspiratori project lands to China

Aspiranti Aspiratori (Aspirators to be) is the title of Sissi’s personal exhibition that was held in Shanghai at Aike-Dellarco Gallery, from July 6thto August 15th 2013. It was promoted by FEC and Elica, and the artist presented the outcome of an artistic path that lasted about one year. The project was realized and curated by FEC, in collaboration with Elica, in 2012, sponsored by the Italian General Consulate in Shanghai.

Aspiranti Aspiratori was conceived starting from the company’s need of fostering new reflection on the air purification issue. Elica is a world leader company producing household hoods. After being presented in 2012 at Milan Elica AirFactory, on the occasion of Salone Internazionale del Mobile 51st edition, and at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, this project has landed to China, where Elica is improving its position.

Three out of the ten Aspiranti Aspiratori have been exhibited at Aike-Dellarco Gallery, along with an animation video entitled Casting – which narrates the Aspirators genesis and evolution and a wide selection of the drawings that Sissi realized while planning and working. Spectators have been able to walk a narrative path moving along art, myth, science, and technology, and have had the chance to vote their favorite aspirator to turn it into a real air purifier.

aspirantiaspiratori.com

14 June 2013
Aspiranti Aspiratori alla mostra ADI DESIGN INDEX 2012 – verso il Premio Compasso d’Oro

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8 May 2013
Marinella Senatore Working is Networking

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28 March 2013
L’arte aiuta le imprese, voi aiutate la Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

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12 March 2013
Deborah Carè alla presentazione del Rapporto Annuale 2012 di Federculture nell’ambito di Libri Come

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1 March 2013
Marinella Senatore e Sissi vincono la seconda edizione del Gotham Prize

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25 February 2013
Ettore Favini al Pastificio Cerere con il progetto Verdecuratoda…voi

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21 February 2013
Francesco Arena alla 55. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia

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18 January 2013
FEC e CONFINDUSTRIA ANCONA presentano CESARE PIETROIUSTI Agìta

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20 November 2012
Marinella Senatore, Filming the process #2

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19 November 2012
Le Marche nello scenario di “Europa 2020”: le imprese culturali e creative

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6 November 2012
Images Moving Images

16, 17, 18 November 2012, Ancona

30 October 2012
Deborah Carè interviene alla presentazione del Rapporto Annuale 2012 di Federculture

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12 October 2012
18 ottobre, Fabriano: Anna Franceschini ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS

 

On Thursday 18 October 2012, at 6 pm at the Fabriano headquarters of the Elica Group, opens the 13th Premio Ermanno Casoli, won by Anna Franceschini (Pavia, 1979) and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli.

Because of her ability to grasp the essence of the reality hidden behind appearances, Anna Franceschini has been invited to carry out a reconnaissance of the territory of Fabriano. The mix of elements linked to the natural, urban and industrial landscape, to history, culture and folk traditions, is the feature that has made the greatest impression on the artist. The hypnotic mechanisms and automations of industrial machinery, the primitive fascination of the Frasassi Caves and the melancholy joy of the region’s popular festivals, such as Fabriano’s historic Infiorata, are the subjects of the films that the artist made in recent months. Conceived along the lines of the combinatory rules of the game of rock-paper-scissors (also known as roshambo), Franceschini’s video installation ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS will superimpose and mix up images relating to the different aspects that characterize the identity of the territory, in a rhythmic and repeated attempt by one to gain the upper hand over the others, just as happens in the history of places, always subject to continual change.

In a virtuous circle of exchange between artist and territory Anna Franceschini, after realizing the work, will organize an event of an educational character, presenting a show of artist’s videos entitled IMAGES MOVING IMAGES. Open to the public, the show will deepen people’s understanding of the work of the artist and of others like her operating in the field of experimental film, while providing the opportunity for an exchange of ideas during the planned talks. The programme of the meetings and the places at which they will be held will be published and kept up to date on the FEC’s website.

The presentation of the Premio Ermanno Casoli will also be the occasion for the inauguration of the space for video projections designed by the Salottobuono studio of architects in the Elica establishment at Fabriano, where Anna Franceschini’s video installation will be shown. The form and materials of this space, defined by a simple volume, will allow the works to be viewed under optimal visual and acoustic conditions, letting visitors isolate themselves temporarily from the surrounding work environment. At the same time, the reflective outer surface of the pavilion will hold a composed dialogue with the structure that houses it, calling attention to the presence of the industrial plant and the phases of manufacturing. This space will be created thanks to the support of PLALAM and RUBNER.

ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS will become part of Elica Contemporary, the art collection on display at Elica’s headquarters in Fabriano, open to the public by appointment.

3 October 2012
Il progetto Sissi Aspiranti Aspiratori selezionato per l’ADI Design Index 2012

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23 September 2012
Al Master di II livello in Curatore di Arte Contemporanea una lezione con Marcello Smarrelli

As part of the 2nd Level Master’s Degree Course in Curating Contemporary Art, the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli’s artistic director Marcello Smarrelli is giving a lecture in Module II, “Economics, Management and Planning”, in the Organizational Planning section, with the title: “Così l’arte si industria. L’attività della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli” (“So Art Gets to Work. The Activity of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli”).

The structure of the Master’s Degree Course takes into consideration the connection with the more recent history of the visual arts, with the socioeconomic and cultural context and with the latest historical, critical and theoretical ideas. During his lecture, Smarrelli will speak of his curatorial experience with the FEC, committed to fostering the relations between art and business by promoting initiatives in which contemporary art becomes an educational and methodological tool for the creation of working environments that favour innovation. In this context, therefore, Marcello Smarrelli will explain what are the characteristics that distinguish the activity of the curator when artists go into companies and the people who work in them are involved in artistic projects.

The lecture will be held on Monday 24 September from 9:30 am until 11:30 am at the MLAC (Museo Laboratorio d’Arte Contemporanea), La Sapienza University in Rome

The Master’s Course avails itself of collaborations with museums at home and abroad, foreign bodies and institutions in Italy, foundations, public and private libraries and public institutions and spaces.

www.uniroma1.it

20 September 2012
Sissi Aspiranti Aspiratori at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna

Friday 21 September, on the occasion of the ninth Artelibro Art Book Festival (Bologna, 21-23 September 2012), two events will be held at the MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna that centre on Aspiranti Aspiratori (Aspiring Aspirators), the experimental project carried out by the artist Sissi in collaboration with the Elica company and the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, in the name of a constructive dialogue between art and industry, inaugurated last April at the 51st Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

At 6 pm there will be a presentation of the artist’s book Sissi Aspiranti Aspiratori, edited by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, and published by Edizioni Corraini.
The book documents all the phases of the project. Invited by Elica – world leader in the production of kitchen extractor hoods – to participate in the process of developing an unconventional and innovative approach to the purification of air, the artist has assembled the preparatory studies for her creations in a hand-written and hand-bound book, a manifesto of Sissi’s reinterpretation of industry: a pulsating body able to play host to the artist herself and spark off an osmotic and constant exchange with her.

At 7 pm the exhibition Sissi Aspiranti Aspiratori, inspired by the book of the same name and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, will open in the spaces of the MAMbo Educational Department. The show, promoted by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Elica in collaboration with the MAMbo Educational Department, presents drawings, collages, reflections and sculptures that contributed to the story, with a mythological flavour, of the birth of ten Aspiring Aspirators, i.e. ten devices for purifying the air, each with a well-defined identity of its own and a name that reveals its pre-eminent characteristic, linked to its form or function. Also on show will be the animated video entitled Casting, which recounts their genesis, and three of the ten Aspiring Aspirators, realized by Sissi following the process of selection that lies at the base of theories of evolution and that has been applied in this case to machines.
The exhibition can be visited from Tuesday to Friday, during the opening hours of the museum, until 7 October 2012.

For more information: www.mambo-bologna.org.

 

7 September 2012
Ettore Favini “Condividere è connettere”, workshop dell’artista con i collaboratori di Bricocenter Italia srl

The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is carrying out a new project with Bricocenter Italia srl aimed at fostering a constructive dialogue between art and industry. On Thursday 13 September at the company’s branch in Cinisello Balsamo, just outside Milan, the artist Ettore Favini will conduct a day-long workshop with ten members of the staff of the biggest chain of do-it-yourself shops in Italy, part of the Groupe Adeo. The initiative is organized by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of the foundation, and is conducted with the assistance of Giovanni Boano, a specialist in managerial training at the Hic et Nunc company.

The workshop with Ettore Favini is held as part of E-STRAORDINARIO, a training programme already tried out successfully in a range of industrial situations, devised by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli with the aim of bringing contemporary art into the business world as a means of ethical and social development. The cooperation between the FEC and Bricocenter Italia srl, however, goes beyond the aspect of training and falls within a broader process already set in motion by the company. Given the name Visione, this programme is progressively involving everyone who works with the company in the task of imagining together how it ought to look in 2020, and then working every day on the realization of this long-term “corporate vision”.
As Sergio Lombardi, Vision project leader, explains: “Visione is a journey deep into the heart and soul of an organization, which the people who work with us both inside and outside the company make with a great sense of intellectual and emotional involvement. This journey – made up of experiences abroad and meetings with people who broaden our horizons – allows us to reveal the dream of a community of work on our own ideal future and to go on to realize it through concrete work projects. Working with an artist gives us the possibility of bringing together the dreams, emotions and hopes considered by the participants during Visione and communicating them through a work of art capable of representing the individual resources of each of them, which become a joint resource for the company.”

The research carried out by Ettore Favini, who uses a variety of techniques, ranging from photography to sculpture, is focused on themes linked to memory in the process of the organization of space and time, to history, to the landscape and to our relationship with the environment. His works always set out to make a connection with the public and with the context in which they are located. On the occasion of the workshop at Bricocenter, Favini will create a work, entitled Condividere è connettere (Sharing Is Connecting), in which the Visione project will be analysed through the experience of ten people who have taken part in it. Following the methodology of E-STRAORDINARIO, after an introduction to the artist’s poetics the workshop will move on to practical activity. The participants will be invited to share with one another a series of words representative of the way in which they have pictured the future prospects of the company. These terms will then be fed into a software program used for network analysis, where they will be isolated from the context of their origin: each story will become a design, an abstraction that the members of the Bricocenter team will recognize as part of themselves and that, subsequently, they will have to reproduce with materials sold by the company. In this phase the whole process takes on shape and turns into a work. The individual contributions will be directed towards the attainment of a common objective, that of making materially visible the ideas and emotions emerging from the Visione process and the themes and reflections tackled during the work with the artist.
“If it is still possible to trace a link between the classical conception of the work of art and the contemporary one,” explains Marcello Smarrelli, “it can be identified in the philosophical thought, by its nature immaterial, that the work of art contains and makes tangible. Art, as a creator of metaphors, still constitutes an indispensable method of research and understanding today and, as such, represents one of the most effective and democratic tools of training, fostering cohesion and the setting in motion of processes aimed at innovation.”

All the phases of the workshop will be documented on a website created by Ettore Favini with the help of the ten participants. In addition the film director Anton Giulio Onofri will make a video on the project.

At the end of the day, Giovanni Boano will guide the participants in translating the metaphors of contemporary art into modes of behaviour useful in the context of the workplace.

 

27 June 2012
ANNA FRANCESCHINI vince la XIII edizione del Premio Ermanno Casoli

Anna Franceschini (Pavia, 1979) is the winner of the 13th Premio Ermanno Casoli, promoted by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and curated by its artistic director, Marcello Smarrelli.
On Thursday 18 October 2012 ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS, a video installation that is the fruit of a complex project centred on the town of Fabriano and its surrounding territory will be presented at the Fabriano headquarters of the Elica Group, world leader in the production of kitchen extractor hoods for use in the home and main sponsor of the FEC.

“The new feature of this 13th occasion on which the prize has been awarded,” declares Deborah Carè, director of the FEC, “is the decision to involve in a decisive and more direct way the town that is its home, Fabriano, where art and industry first began to exercise a mutual influence in the manufacture of paper. One of the most important industrial areas in Europe, Fabriano has a complex and varied identity, and one that is more than ever in need of reconsideration today. I believe that finding a way to marry this remarkable tradition of work to a contemporary cultural production that inspires innovation and creativity in a region of evident historical and artistic value will help to break the economic deadlock in which we find ourselves.”

The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli has decided to award the prize to Anna Franceschini “for the aesthetic quality of her research, expressed through the language of the cinema, and for her ability to find the point of view from which a place, an object or a phenomenon reveals its innermost nature. For the artist the use of moving images is the favoured means for a silent, meditative observation of reality, a space emptied of the human presence, where the flow of time becomes tangible”, explains Marcello Smarrelli. The artist herself speaks of her work as “an investigation of human existence, the vision of a world made by men but devoid of their presence, a moment suspended in time through which it is easier to perceive the spirit of a place”.

The presentation of the Premio Ermanno Casoli will also be the occasion for the inauguration of the space for video projections designed by the Salottobuono studio of architects in the Elica establishment at Fabriano, created thanks to the support of PLALAM, leader in the production of PVC-coated steel and RUBNER, a group operating at an international level that has placed wood at the centre of its entrepreneurial vision, acquiring great expertise in the construction of living spaces.

On the homepage: Anna Franceschini, Untitled (Almost Lost), Super8 film transferred on dvd, colour, mute, 49”, looped (shot at 18 and 24 FPS), 2010.
Produced with the support of Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten – Amsterdam.
Courtesy: Nicoletta Fiorucci.
 

 

16 May 2012
Francesco Arena “Canzone (povera patria)”

On the occasion of Poiesis – the festival of poetry, art, music, film and drama that will be held for the fifth time in Fabriano from 25 to 27 May 2012 – the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli presents a performance by the artist Francesco Arena, entitled Canzone (povera patria) and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, art director of the foundation. The event will take place on Friday 25 May at 8 pm and on Saturday 26 May at 8:30 pm, at the Chiostro di San Benedetto.

In his works Francesco Arena takes up facts and personages from more or less recent Italian and international history, reworking their political, religious and social elements in order to offer a new key to their interpretation.
In the performance Canzone (povera patria) a man strikes a metal pole with a grinder, emitting short and long sparks corresponding to the dots and dashes in Morse code. In this manner the man “writes” the lyrics of Povera Patria, one of Franco Battiato’s most popular songs, in which the singer-songwriter turns a lucid and critical gaze on Italy, expressing his scorn in harsh words (“Poor homeland! Crushed by the abuses of power of wicked people…"), but also sending a clear message of hope and deliverance (“It won’t change, it won’t change yes it’ll change, you’ll see it will change”).
As is typical of his research, on this occasion too Francesco Arena tackles a theme of great topical interest, work, and the value that should be given to it in a vision of our country’s future.

“By promoting this event,” declares deputy chairman Francesco Casoli, “the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli intends to underline the central role that work plays in people’s life and in the building of a fairer society. Francesco Arena allows us to reflect on a theme that has characterised the identity of Fabriano for years and that now needs new stimuli and new ideas more than ever before. It is with this spirit that the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli has long fostered an active dialogue between contemporary art and business, as it is only by developing a culture suited to innovation within organizations that we can think about creating new jobs.”

Venue for the performance: Chiostro San Benedetto, at the Complesso Monumentale di San Benedetto, Piazza Francesco Fabi Altini 9, Fabriano
Dates and timings: Friday 25 May, 8 pm; Saturday 26 May, 8:30 pm
Entrance: free

 

 

15 May 2012
Un nuovo logo per la Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

Constantly engaged in experimentation and in a search for new forms of expression, the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is renewing its image and adopting a new logo. A more contemporary design to represent the foundation that, since 2007, has been committed to promoting an active dialogue between the worlds of art and industry.
“E” and “C”, the letters that make up the new logo, are the initials of Ermanno Casoli, founder of the Elica company to whose memory the foundation is dedicated. The synthesis between the rigorous straight lines of these two characters expresses the foundation’s objective in a clear and effective manner: rendering collaboration between artists and industries a concrete and successful possibility. From the union of these two initials emerges the “F” of Fondazione, underlining the way in which the idea of this institution was already implicit in Ermanno Casoli’s name and personality.
Interaction, crossover, exchange and experimentation are the key concepts that the foundation intends to convey, in part through this new logo, which will be progressively inserted into all future forms of communication.

The new logo for the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli was conceived and created by Giandomenico Carpentieri, graphic designer and art director, with the collaboration of Maddalena Salerno, production and project manager.

The FEC also invites you to visit its new page on Facebook and click on “Like”.
 

18 April 2012
Alberto Tadiello, Things Go On With Mistakes

20 April 2012 from 9 am to 4 pm
Rome, at the offices of MSD Italia

curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Alberto Tadiello is the protagonist of the third and last engagement of E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia, the training program promoted by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli that involves thirty employees of the company – Italian subsidiary of the pharmaceutical multinational Merck – in a series of workshops in which artists are placed at the centre of the training process.
The initiative, in line with the commitment of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli to foster the dialogue between art and industry, is organized by Marcello Smarrelli, art director of the foundation, and carried out with the collaboration of Giovanni Boano, a specialist in managerial training and partner of the Hic et Nunc company, and enjoys the patronage of MiBAC, the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities.

E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia was launched last January with the workshop conducted by Tomaso De Luca, Drawing after Architecture, and continued in March with Margherita Moscardini’s workshop Condominium (or The Merck Index).

Known for his installations and performances centring on the relationship between sound and vision, Alberto Tadiello takes an approach of an almost “scientific” character to his research, leading him to experiment with new relations between the various elements and constantly probe the limits and potentialities of the interactions between different forces.
“I think of the encounter with the employees of MSD Italia as a moment of sharing and mutual understanding”, explains the artist, “a participatory process, a gathering of ideas”. The title of the workshop, Things Go On with Mistakes, refers to a track on an album born out of a collaboration between an American and a Dutch band (In The Fishtank 11, The Black Heart Procession + Solbakken). For the occasion Tadiello is proposing a project that aims at the creation of sound elements as a basis and stimulus for cooperation between the participants.

Following the methodology of E-STRAORDINARIO, developed by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, after a first theoretical phase in which Marcello Smarrelli presents the artist and his poetics, the workshop will move on to practical activity. All those taking part will receive a variety of materials which they will have to use to invent instruments, exploiting very simple working mechanisms such as rotation and friction to generate sound or noise. Each participant will carry out his or her own research with the aim of constructing something, of creating a sound entity that can be used to give rise to a joint action, to an ensemble of elements that can be coordinated to work together, “like a small circus, an orchestra in miniature composed of all the pieces produced”.

At the end of the day, Giovanni Boano will guide the participants in interpreting what they have learned from their experience in practical terms of organization, translating the metaphors of contemporary art into modes of behaviour that can be applied in the business context.
As Giorgio Cavalleri, Sr. HRBP and Learning & Development Mgr. at MSD Italia and in charge of the project, puts it: “Training at MSD Italia is a process whose aim is to develop a competence, that is to act in more effective way to obtain a given result”.
Through enjoyment of an artistic experience, the participants in E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia are stimulated to reflect on the utility of putting their own skills into practice in the operational phase. During the workshops with the artists important themes are tackled, which find concrete application in every area of work: from concepts of perseverance and tenacity in the face of difficulties and uncertainties, emphasized in Tomaso De Luca’s workshop, to the idea of standards to be referred to and used as a basis for creativity, at the centre of Margherita Moscardini’s project, and finally to the capacity for organization, the ability to carry out research before acting, to do your work one step at a time, making trials and allowing yourself to make mistakes, as in Alberto Tadiello’s workshop.
 

15 March 2012
Sissi “Aspiranti Aspiratori”

Tuesday, 17 April 2012. On the occasion of the 51st edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile (Milan, 17 – 22 April 2012), Elica and the Ermanno Casoli Foundation will be presenting Aspiranti Aspiratori, a solo exhibition by the artist Sissi, staged at the Elica AirFactory in the Brera district and open to the public until 19 May 2012.
The exhibition, curated by Marcello Smarrelli – the Foundation’s artistic director – takes its name from a larger project that the artist created in collaboration with Elica over about a year.
The idea for Aspiranti Aspiratori stems from the need of the company, world leader in the production of cooker hoods for household use, to generate new reflections on the theme of air purification.

In line with her aptitude for renaming and classifying reality, Sissi began by formulating a new concept, Organindustry, from which came a methodology capable of enabling communication between art and industry. The artist is housed inside the factory, familiarises herself with the environment until making it at one with her body and fills it with content. Then comes the start of an ongoing osmotic exchange between the company, transformed into the body of the artist, and the artist herself.
Over the space of a year, Sissi produced drawings, collages, reflections and sculptures that contribute to the narration, with a mythological slant, of the birth of ten Aspiranti Aspiratori, ten prospective objects intended to purify the air. Their genesis is told by an animated video entitled Casting, which will be shown at the exhibition.
In accordance with the selection process that underlies the theories of evolution and that is applied in this case to the machines, the artist has created three of the ten Aspiranti Aspiratori.

The exhibition will be enhanced by an artist’s book entitled Aspiranti Aspiratori, published by Corraini, which will retrace all the stages of the project, explaining the new interpretation that the artist has given to the industry: a body that hosts and feels, an Organindustry.

The initiative is also documented on www.aspirantiaspiratori.com, where you can also vote for the Aspiranti Aspiratori.

 

6 March 2012
5×1000 alla Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

2 March 2012
Francesco Casoli riceve l’ARTOUR-O d’Argento

In the compass of the international cultural event ARTOUR-O the MUST 2012, on Sunday 4 March at Villa la Vedetta in Florence, Francesco Casoli, chairman of Elica and vice president of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, will receive the ARTOUR-O d’Argento, a special prize awarded to those who have distinguished themselves by their commitment to the support of art and culture.

An enlightened entrepreneur, Francesco Casoli has also nursed a great passion for art that has led him over the years to back numerous cultural initiatives. His involvement in the field of art as a patron began in 1998 with the establishment of the Premio Ermanno Casoli and he has been constant in his support for the activity of the foundation of the same name, set up in 2007 with the aim of promoting an active dialogue between art and industry and which has since become a point of reference on this theme in Italy.

ARTOUR-O the MUST is an international event devoted to art and design organized in Florence by the Ellequadro cultural association. This year it is dedicated to Children, the citizens of tomorrow, and to Beauty. The project, now being staged for the eighth year in succession, focuses its attention on the quality and value of culture, attracting the interest of eminent scholars and figures in our country. The event, centred on the role of commissioning, is characterized by the creation of an ever closer dialogue between institutions and the private sphere. This year too museums, foundations, associations, municipalities and companies have been invited to take part in four days (from 1 to 4 March) devoted to art, design, exhibitions, meetings and performances.

For more information: www.ellequadro.com
 

1 March 2012
Deborah Carè interviene al seminario “CulturAttiva. L’interazione tra impresa e cultura: reale possibilità di crescita”

On Friday 2 March Deborah Carè, director of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Brand Marketing Manager of the Elica Group, will take part in the seminar CulturAttiva. The Interaction between Enterprise and Culture: a Real Possibility for Growth and Development, which will be held at L’ARCA conference room in Teramo.

The meeting will analyse examples, possibilities and strategies that link enterprise and culture in a synergic and fruitful relationship. In particular, the seminar will look at themes connected with the positive effects that culture can have on businesses, bringing benefits for production, for human resources and for the work environment as a whole.

On this occasion, Deborah Carè will illustrate the experience of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, a pioneer in investigating the potentialities of the dialogue between art and industry through increasingly structured and specialized activities, aimed at getting these two worlds to interact in the attainment of their mutual objectives.
More and more companies are choosing to work with the foundation. For enterprises, in fact, art functions as an antenna ready to pick up signals of innovation and represents a strong stimulus to finding new solutions for crucial questions that concern the business world.

Info: www.bmidea.it
 

29 February 2012
Margherita Moscardini, “Condominium (or The Merck Index)”

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

17 February 2012
FEC Lectures – Adelita Husni-Bey – Arte e immaginari sociali alternativi

On Monday 20 February, at 9 am, the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is presenting a talk on the work of the artist Adelita Husni-Bey at the headquarters of the Elica company in Fabriano, organized by Marcello Smarrelli. The initiative is being staged as part of the FEC Lectures, a programme of lectures, seminars and meetings set up by the foundation. The talk is aimed at a group of Elica’s employees and falls within a broader training project promoted by the company that uses art as a stimulant for creativity and innovation.

The conversation with Adelita Husni-Bey will centre on the fundamental elements that make up her work, which focuses on investigating the relations between art, society, politics, education, territories and history. Utilizing a variety of media, such as drawing, painting and video, the artist embarks on narrations that embraceboth collective history and individual stories, superimposingmemories, tales and accounts. Husni-Bey’s criticalreflection on the role of art in societyextends toexperimentingwith interactions and exchanges with models of education, the authorities, sociallife and the economy, putting to the test art’s capacity to generatealternativeimaginative worlds to the familiar and established ones.
This meetingis intended to provide an opportunity for discussionon the useful role that contemporary art can play in times of crisis, ascatalyst of a processof participation that helps to create new scenarios and find new solutions. The debate will also turn on the concepts of consumption and production, not justfrom the viewpoint of economicsbut alsoas fundamental parts of the life of the community, from the consumption of oxygen to the production of ideas.
 

20 January 2012
E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia. Tomaso De Luca – Margherita Moscardini – Alberto Tadiello

The commitment of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli to fostering an active dialogue between art and industry continues with a new training programme that involves thirty members of staff of the company MSD Italia – the Italian subsidiary of the American pharmaceutical company Merck – and three artists of international standing: Tomaso De Luca, Margherita Moscardini and Alberto Tadiello.

For the first time, in fact, the foundation is working with the pharmaceutical multinational Merck on E-STRAORDINARIO, the project that uses contemporary art as a means of corporate training and development, an approach already successfully tried out with other companies. The initiative, entitled E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia, is organized by Marcello Smarrelli, art director of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, and is conducted with the collaboration of Giovanni Boano, a specialist in managerial training at the Hic et Nunc company.

It will entail three days of workshops that will be held between January and April 2012 at the headquarters of MSD Italia in Rome and will involve, on each of the days, one of the three artists and ten members of the company’s staff, holding a wide range of positions, both of a managerial nature (human resources, accountancy, finance, marketing, customer services, etc.) and a scientific one (medical administration, drug information).

“The MSD Italia training programme is a process whose objective is to develop a capacity, that is to say a more efficient way of acting to attain a given result”, declares Giorgio Cavalleri, Sr. HRBP & Learning & Development Mgr. in MSD Italia and head of the project. “For this reason, it is important to understand the goal that has been set and to act personally. In this connection, it is the participants who are expected to assess their own training needs, with the help and support of their manager and the Training department. Thanks to the collaboration with Hic et Nunc and the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli we are able to offer an absorbing and enjoyable educational experience, and one that is easy to put into practice.”

The artists invited take part in the project by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli come from different professional backgrounds but share a bent for experimentation, a willingness to make use of a wide range of languages and media and a capacity to interact with people, getting them to participate in their work.

“The project”, explains Giovanni Boano, “lasting a year in total, involves artists and members of staff in a highly innovative process, which for the first time adopts the contents and methodologies of art as concrete instruments for use in a training process aimed at the acquisition of a set of specific operational skills, essential to the growth of the company and of the people who work in it”.

 

11 January 2012
Out of the company. La direzione del personale del Gruppo Angelini in visita al MAXXI

On Thursday 12 January the Fondazione Ermanno Casoliis holding a guided tourof the MAXXI (National Museum of 21st-Century Arts) in Rome, for over a hundred people from the personnel departments of companies belonging to theinternational Angelini Group, a leader in the wellbeing and healthsector. The initiative, organized by Marcello Smarrelli (art director of the foundation), is being carried out with the collaboration of Piero Tucci, senior partner of the M&D company, which specializes in the training and development of human resources.

The tour is part of Out of the Company, the project devised by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli to introduce professionals from the industrial field to the world of art through cultural activities organized for the purposeat the most important exhibition venues.

 

The aim of the initiative is to provide an educational experience for the company based on the metaphors of contemporaryart in order to stimulate reflections on the methodology of artistic creation, which canserve as a model for managerial action. In times of crisis, in particular, it becomes necessary to re-examine and reinterpret the environment and the system of organization, reformulating the fundamental values of company culture whichcan have a significant influence on growth and innovation. Through its own activities, the foundation has found that art represents a great resource for businesses in the handling of change, as it is capable of undermining the paradigms of a pre-established way of acting and thinking, favouring the emergence of new ideas and suggesting alternative approaches for the solution of problems.

 

The managers of the Angelini Group will be welcomed by Anna Mattirolo, director of MAXXI Art, while Pippo Ciorra, senior curator for MAXXI Architecture, will offer them an explanation of the spaces designed by  Zaha Hadid. Marcello Smarrelli will provide a general introduction to the languages and codes of contemporary art, while Deborah Carè, director of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, will explain how contemporary art can be turned into a useful and effective means of stimulating the cultural and economic development of companies. At the end of the tour of the MAXXI, Piero Tucci will guide the participants in identifying theformative messages of this experience, translating them intouseful modes of behaviourin the context of work.

“Having to tackle themes like innovation and change”, explains Tucci, “the metaphor of contemporary artappearedto us the moststimulating and meaningful, perfectly consistent from the viewpoint of educational planning with the connotations of experimentation and creativityfrom which, for the activity of training, our collaboration with the companies of the AngeliniGroup has always drawn inspiration”.

13 December 2011
Francesco Casoli al seminario SALTO CULTURALE

Francesco Casoli, in his capacity as vice-president of the foundation devoted to his father Ermanno Casoli, has been invited to take part in the seminar Salto Culturale. Operatori culturali, Imprese e Amministrazioni Pubbliche alla sfida della crescita intelligente (Cultural Leap. Cultural Operators, Business and Public Administration Meeting the Challenge of Intelligent Growth), that will be held on Wednesday 14 December in Ancona, at the ISTAO Villa Favorita.

Staged by the Province of Ancona, the seminar has set itself the goal of analysing and discussing the most effective modes of operation to ensure that support for artistic and cultural projects becomes a strategic means of increasing the competitiveness of companies in the knowledge economy.
The starting point of the debate will be an evaluation of the experience of Cohabitat, the funding programme of the province’s cultural activities over the three years from 2008 to 2010. Thus an attempt will be made to study in depth the relationship between business and culture from a practical point of view, in full awareness of the fact that the current situation demands rapid and responsible decisions on all fronts.

On this occasion Francesco Casoli will recount the experience of the Fondazione Casoli, which is committed to forging a permanent link and a proactive collaboration between the artistic/cultural sphere and the industrial one, illustrating the solutions adopted to attain this objective and the results of the work that has been done so far.

The day will be concluded by Pietro Marcolini, councillor for the Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Marche Region.

For information: www.cohabitat.it, tel. 071 872484

 

 

7 December 2011
Mario Cristiani entra nel Comitato Scientifico della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli

The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is delighted to announce the entry of Mario Cristiani onto its Advisory Board.

Founder and co-director, along with Maurizio Rigillo and Lorenzo Fiaschi, of the Galleria Continua – one of the most important institutions for contemporary art at an international level with branches in San Gimignano, Beijing and the vicinity of Paris – Mario Cristiani carries out constant research into the question of the promotion of art, to which he assigns a fundamental role in the construction of reality. President of the Associazione Arte Continua, which has been operating since 1990 in the province of Siena and elsewhere, Cristiani has also focused his research on the possibility of establishing a new relationship between the city and its territory, through the creation of unprecedented links between art, architecture and landscape in collaboration with the local authorities (Arte all’Arte, ArtePollino un altro sud).
For these reasons Mario Cristiani’s involvement is in perfect keeping with the objectives and values on which the activity of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli is based: promoting the educational and methodological function of art, trying out new directions, supporting dialogue between different disciplines, actively involving the viewer, presenting art as an ethical model, developing the territory through a cultural proposal of quality.

www.galleriacontinua.com
 

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