On the occasion of LODI BASéLL, the artist from Lodi, Tonino Negri, presents IRONIC, IERATIC, CERAMIC (Via Lodino 63, Lodi).
As customary, Tonino Negri manipulates materials to give shape to his evocative works that play with space and archetype. His ceramic forms echo maternal bellies, refuge houses, flasks, whales, and the notion of enclosed space. His production spans decades, remaining morphologically consistent and materially sensitive since the 1980s. A wide selection of his works will be visible inside his studio during the weekend. Another series of works, including the installation that will be present in the showcase, engages with a production referencing historical avant-gardes and new attitudes. From Duchamp's ready-made, they borrow the category of infra-thin: the artist's hand in the selection of existing elements "imposes" a different meaning. From the Situationist practice, they borrow the detournement of the object's sense and its use. From conceptual and linguistic abstraction, they borrow didactic practice as a complementary attribution of meaning. But the common thread unifying these objects is the practice of irony, understood in its etymology of concealing a thought through an expression that seemingly overturns its meaning. Precisely due to this depth of reference and intention, we cannot consider these works mere diversions, but effective sense condensers that shift our inattentive and overloaded daily gaze, demanding our attention.