«[…] the artist aspires to differ in nothing from a pious craftsman». (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Śiva)
The newly established Fondazione Emilio Scanavino opens its doors to the public with an exhibition curated by Marco Scotini and Michel Gauthier, which will remain open until 22 June 2025, with the evocative title: Les Monstres Amis, dedicated to the contribution described by Emilio Scanavino and the Albisola group at the 1954 Milan Triennale. The exhibition documents an essential contribution that took place in the course of a year, 1954 in fact, which saw Scanavino as a crucial figure, who was influenced by the instances of exponents of different artistic climates (post-surrealism, Cobra, the Mouvement International pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste, the latter having been also set up in 1954) and at the same time always maintained an irreducible independence and an ultimate fidelity to the subject of his own investigation.
VV.AA., “Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale”, curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini, installation view, courtesy Fondazione Emilio Scanavino, ph. Bruno Bani
And what, then, was this subject? In his contribution to the rich exhibition catalogue, curator Marco Scotini quotes some verses engraved by Édouard Jaguer in the clay of a black vase by Asger Jorn: «[…] we are the animals of the forest. From everywhere, we have flocked to come here to Albisola, to knead clay in the form of men, plants and stars and create friendly monsters». Clay becomes first and foremost an ideal recording apparatus for fortuitous, unexpected and monstrous encounters. From this point of view, Scanavino’s total adherence to this assumption seems to electrify the entire production in the exhibition, even when it pertains to other contemporary artists (Enrico Baj, Roberto Matta and Lucio Fontana are noteworthy): it becomes, that is, a happy anti-programmatic interference, a body-on-body impression – monster-on-monster -, a “juxtaposition of epidermis», as Artaud would say.
VV.AA., “Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale”, curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini, installation view, courtesy Fondazione Emilio Scanavino, ph. Bruno Bani
On the other hand, the research exhibited at the X Triennale, presented here again, takes the form of an open workshop that never strays, in its essential intentions, from the furrow of the ceramicist tradition. Attention to the intrinsic potential of clay, and also the use of well-codified forms of everyday use (vases, plates, trays), brings the artists back to a craftsmanship that is particularly edifying in its relationship with the present; a slavish service of what is already contained in things, which finds its fulfilment in the discovery of their invisible and marvellous aspects.
VV.AA., “Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale”, curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini, installation view, courtesy Fondazione Emilio Scanavino, ph. Bruno Bani
The strictly installation choices of Les Monstres Amis follow similar precepts, faithfully referring to the management of the spaces of the X Triennale. In this regard, one corner usefully reproposes a photographic cutaway of Joe Colombo’s period setting (an ‘exhibition view’, as curatorial assistant Alberto Navilli points out) that underlines the documentary commitment of the exhibition. A passage from an article in Domus by Ettore Sottsass, again quoted by Scotini, refers to seeing «behind the destruction of all certainties», enacted by Scanavino, «someone smiling quietly at the idea that in the small and large chaos of which the world is made, and which could seem so frightening and so disconsolate, there is still a place for ecstatic eyes, for fantasies, for realities so intimate that no one has ever given them a glance».
VV.AA., “Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale”, curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini, installation view, courtesy Fondazione Emilio Scanavino, ph. Bruno Bani
Handed back to the spectator is a world that even today retains, i.e. reproduces, all its inducement of unexpected fantasies, capable of opening up spaces for experimentation outside the colonised imaginaries of the present.
Info:
Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale
04/04/2025 – 22/06/2025
curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini
Fondazione Emilio Scanavino
Piazza Aspromonte 17, Milano
www.fondazionescanavino.org
Born in Venice in 1998, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan where he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2023 he published his first essay for the Calibano series by Prospero Editore: “Tradizione e Trasgressione. Note dall’India per un’arte indipendente”. In 2024 he won the Europa in Versi Giovani prize, which was followed by the publication in 2025 of his anthology “sillabario del terribile incanto” by Quaderni del Bardo Editore. He is currently attending the two-year course in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at Naba in Milan.
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