Bertozzi & Casoni, Snc.

Stefano Pasquini

“The effort of this art company has always been to reconnect the vase to Vasari, i.e. theory and practice, reflection and action.”
Eduardo Alamaro1

When you meet Bertozzi & Casoni the first thing that strikes you is their down to earth approach to their work. The makers of what Roberto Daolio describes as  “disturbing and insidious popular art”2 will tell you about their upcoming show in a prestigious New York gallery with the same tone of voice they would describe a day at the local market selling ceramics. Their pragmatic approach to art making is comparable to the lifestyle of a Renaissance artist. “It’s almost an obligatory choice,” Bertozzi tells me, “we started off as a laboratory with the idea of reconstructing a lost trade, something that was similar to the artist trade. Planning our work this way, it was inevitable that we would develop a language that would evolve in time, through constant verification during the realisation process.”
Stefano Dal Monte Casoni and Giampaolo Bertozzi met at the Art Institute of Ceramics of Faenza in the late Seventies. Admittedly, neither of them was particularly interested in ceramic in itself, but they did like art. Stefano, a few years younger than Giampaolo, allegedly was very taken by the sculptural ability of Giampaolo and kept bothering him until they eventually became friends, and it was soon clear that they would be working together. This meant, above all, business. Their rather unusual first trade decision was to buy a studio to work in. This implied starting up a company3 and working very hard as ceramists to pay off the mortgage. Also, it implied a strong will to produce things. Their strategy was based on the fact that even though they worked as ceramists (and skilfully so) they never really wanted to give much importance to the medium. Their foremost gravitational interest was always the art world, and this gave them the opportunity to work for artists and designers (like Arman or Mendini) and get a sound understanding of matter-of-fact issues related to contemporary art, and the chance to meet important artists and gallerists.
Meeting Gian Enzo Sperone whilst working for other artists was a good starting point to furthering their career in the art world. In 1998 they finished a huge majolica piece titled “Virgin and Child with Lawn Mower” which they presented in Milan in a show titled “Choose Heaven”, which he helped curate. The sculpture sees the Virgin Mary mowing a flowery lawn, and the flowers continue their movement into the dress in a sort of Mandala circle. “To us it was a great opportunity to challenge a big sculptural group”, they tell me, “and make a figure in a big scale. If you look at the way it’s made, it’s not particularly realistic, it has a bit of the feeling of a Japanese mask”. This was a definite turning point in their career, so much so that they published a whole book on how they made the sculpture on a daily basis, and it took them almost two years to complete it.
When I enquire about the meaning of it they start arguing: “It was about time she’d do something, so we thought of mowing the lawn” jokes Stefano, “it has a lot to do with death” Paolo throws in, “and the traditional iconography of the Madonna in the garden”, “yeah, she’s like a garden killer…” the joke goes on and I’m left without an answer.
In the book about the making of it there are quotes such as “we still can’t see the whole sculpture fully assembled, but can only imagine it, and there’s a difference between design and simulation; a sculpted form cannot be designed” and I tell them that revealing the complete working progress of an artwork (including the creative thinking behind it) is something not many artists would do. “That’s because they don’t make the work themselves” they reply. 
Bertozzi and Casoni don’t make a secret of the fact that their creative process has its basis in the dialogue between each other: “people assume that creativity springs out of a strong personality, but our way of working is based on discharging our own subjectivity into a dialogue between the two of us. This kind of teamwork is based not only on this dialogue, but also on the freedom within it. There can be no art without freedom.” 
Their newest works have assumed an amazingly realistic quality, so much so that often spectators are inclined to touch the ceramic to verify that a cigarette packet is not just a real cigarette packet but a ceramic cigarette packet. This almost forces Bertozzi and Casoni to make some of the objects in their “rubbish” compositions look like they are fake in order to make the spectator aware that what faces them is made of ceramic and not plastic or paper. The compositional process can be very time consuming as some of these items need up to five firings, while others are ready with two, so glue is sometimes used for some difficult parts, while generally the objects are stuck together by its glaze. “We are very attentive when it comes to the making of the product,” they tell me in front of a pile of bones, “and in a sense this comes out of our beginning in the design field.” Inasmuch as they like including citations from the art world (like Brillo boxes or Manzoni’s cans), they’re always busy trying to test new industrial materials. “There was a time in the industry when glass materials were fashionable” Stefano tells me “so we tried them out, and we found we could get a very lifelike impression of frost, which we used in the works in our last exhibition in Trento, so you see that material sometimes guides the artist over a particular path, and not vice versa”.
And they show me this amazing composition of broken plates, rubbish and snow on top of a plastic fruit container. In the middle of it, within the ice and almost sleepy, an orang-utan’s head, with a little drop of blood coming out of its nostril. “They’re endangered of extinction”, they say.

Notes:
1)	Eduardo Alamaro, “L’Oro di Imola”, essay in Innovazione di processo innovazione di prodotto, catalogue of the show Choose Heaven, Galleria 1000EVENTI, Milan, 1998.
2)	Roberto Daolio, “Bertozzi & Casoni – Finis Terrae?”, essay from the catalogue of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Spazio Aperto, Quaderno No. 25, 2001.
3)	Bertozzi & Casoni Snc. (Snc. stands for Società a Nome Collettivo – Collective Name Company)