Archeologie battered surfaces, stripped fresco look

Inspired by the idea that “a wall is like a book to be opened”, in the Archeologie collection Franco Guerzoni uses large ceramic surfaces as a medium for his pictorial language, made up of visual signs intended to stimulate “a journey into the interior, revealing the experiences, memories, signs and symbols the wall has absorbed over the centuries”. Disused locations, domestic architecture and industrial spaces, and archaic and ruined dwellings re-emerge from the painted surface with the dignity of intense, image-inspiring apparitions.

Running through eras and histories that lead back to ancient times, all the way to the archetypal cave, the most symbolic of all locations, the archaeology of the everyday is brought back to life through filmy coatings and painting-over effects that create new memories on the surface of the ceramic slabs. What Guerzoni’s new collection offers us is reverse archaeology, defined not in a retrospective, backwardlooking narrative but rather in an ideal sketch of the future, rendered through a mixture of signs that contains and overlaps different historic ages.