Francesco Geronazzo with Carlotta Pesce
Roots
January – March 2017
Studio Carlotta Pesce is pleased to present an outstanding example of synergism between art and business: a Bologna-based company, Essse Caffè, invited a young artist, Francesco Geronazzo, of Venetian origins but living and working in the Emilia region in Northern Italy, to create a project specially designed for the recently restored historic headquarters of the family-owned Segafredo coffee roasting business, in via Galliera, Bologna.
The company’s history and the artist’s life experience intertwine and overlap right from the title of the exhibition project: Roots – intended as symbolic elements that evoke the concept of origin, of a starting point. Coffee grounds, personally recovered by the artist at the factory, create tonal variations in a set of small sculptures: delicate organic shapes created from casts of roots that the artist gathered in Australia. The experience of living in Australia was a turning point in the personal and artistic life of the author and possibly a place where to put down his roots.
Fragments of natural elements such as a seed shape, a stone or small shrubs, often recur in Francesco Geronazzo’s art. The artist, through an extremely personal use of ancient printmaking techniques, creates intensely poetic images, consisting of one-of-a-kind, unique, original and deliberately imperfect items – to emphasise the hands-on and craft-like dimension of his work. In his research work, the art of printmaking, sculpture and installation combine in a single poetic vision, mingling natural elements and life memories – in a slow, archaic process in stark contrast to the image production and reproduction options allowed by modern technology.
Next to the sculptures, coffee plant impressions on lightweight, recycled paper, and ground coffee used as a pigment together with roasting waste, characterise two other monotype prints of a circle on crude linen – a design at the same time inspired by the shape of the coffee containers at the historic roasting factory and a symbol of perfection, harmony, and infinity. Once again, the artist created a deliberately imperfect image that suggests the unpredictability and transience of natural elements.
Francesco Geronazzo lives and works in Castel del Rio, near Bologna, Italy and Margaret River, Australia.
He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna where he currently teaches printmaking techniques.
Awards and honours:
Invited as resident guest to Taccuino Urbinate KAUS Urbino 2016
2nd Prize for Printmaking at FIG Bilbao 2013
1st Prize in Arts at In-Arti Mestieri Suzzara 2012
3rd Prize Fibrenus Carnello 2012
1st Prize for Printmaking Giorgio Morandi Bologna 2011
Painting Award Fondazione Zucchelli Bologna 2010
1st Prize for Painting Molinella 2010
Invited to Printmaking Symposium KAUS Urbino 2008
Painting Award Fondazione Zucchelli Bologna 2008
First Prize for Printmaking “Carnello Carte ad Arte” 2007
1st Prize for Printmaking Gorlago 2006
1st Prize for Printmaking “Ex Libris Giorgio Gasparini” Treviso 2004