Archives: Attività

“Fiori diversi al naturale” is a site-specific artwork by artist Agostino Iacurci, the winner of the 22nd edition of Premio Ermanno Casoli, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, in the headquarters of Airforce, a company belonging to the Elica group, in Cerreto d’Esi (AN).

The artwork was accomplished through a series of actions that actively involved the entire company population – around 100 people with heterogeneous professional profiles, without any organisational distinction – transforming a large portion of the plant, previously only used as a transit area, into a place to stop and meet.

The title of the work, Fiori diversi al naturale (meaning ‘different flowers in the wild’), is a nod to Francesco Mingucci (1570-1642), a painter and cartographer from Pesaro renowned for portraying the Marche region in the 17th century. A forerunner in the study of nature and its correlation with culture, Mingucci depicted the local landscape by highlighting the interaction and continuity between urban and natural elements, as well as between architecture and rock formations.

Landscape and architecture are also central themes in Iacurci’s research. In his artistic practice, he uses painting, sculpture, drawing, light and sound, heterogeneously combining various media to create immersive installations engaged in an intimate dialogue with places. The result is visionary spaces in which stories, personal memories, literary references and vernacular tales freely converge. His large-scale works, which have decreed his international success, take the form of expanded painting interventions, an original reinterpretation of the so-called ‘Architettura parlante’ (meaning ‘speaking architecture’).

During the workshop, theoretical and practical sessions followed one another, as introduced by a conversation between Agostino Iacurci and Marcello Smarrelli on the themes of the project. The lecture by design historian and curator Domitilla Dardi, who related the stories of scientific and fantastic herbariums created by botanists and artists through the ages, was very inspiring. Based on the suggestions received, combined with their own imagination and experiences, each participant drew a picture of a flower, contributing to the creation of a herbarium conceived by the artist as a collective portrait of the company’s population. Like a frieze, the herbarium runs along the walls housing a large wall painting, painted by employee groups, depicting the flowers in this garden. The installation is completed by sculptural elements – the planters with their seats – designed by the artist with the contribution of STARTT – an architecture and land transformation studio.

The garden created in the new Airforce plant becomes a tangible symbol of their common commitment and their desire to take root and grow together as a cohesive and collaborative community.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Switch The Rules is the title of the exhibition curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, in which the most beautiful pictures of the homonymous photographic contest, promoted by Elica and FEC, were exhibited in the Spazio Cerere from 25th to 27th October, inside the Rome Art Week program.

The contest, inspired on the Elica advertising campaign “Upside Down” dedicated to the new aspiration hob NikolaTesla Switch, challenged the participants to free their creativity and present surprising images on Instagram, capable of modifying the usual points of view. Thousands participants fully grasp the essence of the project sharing on their Instragram profiles high quality content with #SwitchTheRules and @elicarianuova.

The prestigious jury composed of Cristina Casoli (FEC President), Francesco Casoli (Elica President); Maria Claudia Clemente (architect, Studio Labics); Fabrizio Crisà (designer); Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Artistic Director Malaspina Foundation); Rä Di Martino (artist), Marcello Smarrelli (FEC artistic director) selected, for the exhibition, the most interesting and original creations among the thousands gathered during the contest.

During the inauguration was finally announced the winner, Pietro Bucciarelli, aka @buccinson, with the pictures titled “Find something”, awarded with a voucher for the purchase of photographic material.

HAND#4 is the title of the workshop conceived and organised by Francesca Grilli with the aim of making the 25 students who took part in it to understand how one’s personality can be represented by the body, thereby encouraging a more instinctive and free reading.

Indeed, the activity, which is structured as a workshop devoted to the reading of the body, focuses on the interpretation of the lines of the hand, hence the title Hand. Our hands speak volumes about us: they are one of the body parts that are most used to communicate, they seal new knowledge and agreements, they are perfect tools for working. The first part of the day saw a first stage in which the participants learned to use colour in order to take their handprints and have a complete overview of all its lines. In the second stage, we moved on to the study of the hand itself, focusing on shape, colour, softness, feel and elasticity. In the final stage, the participants read each other’s hand: the different stories were collected in a soundtrack which, together with the handprint, makes part of a collection of sounds and images created by the artist and the participants.

The workshop enabled the students who took part in it to work on the value of change, the breaking of patterns and the importance of communication as a necessary tool for teamwork.

HAND#4 is part of the course, completely in English, held by Chiara Paolino, a researcher in the field of Corporate Organization and author, together with Marcello Smarrelli and Deborah Carè, of the book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Innovating enterprises through art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method), published in 2018 by the EGEA Publishing House.

Visionair is the name of the installation that was carried out by the architecture firm Labics (Maria Claudia Clemente, Francesco Isidori) and curated by Marcello Smarrelli; it was presented by Elica and FEC at the latest edition of Milan Fuorisalone, within the exhibition INTERNI Exhibition House in Motion, which was open to visitors on April 16-28, 2018 at the suggestive venue of Università degli Studi di Milano, Ca’ Granda. This place was designed by Florence architect Filarete and was one of the first Renaissance buildings in town; it was pivotal for the development of Northern Italy architecture.

Visionair is a ‘warning object’, a ‘small’ architecture which was born by a reflection on the topic of the point of view capsizing. This concept underpins the latest experimentations carried out by Elica. It is installed in Cà Granda courtyard, which it borrows the geometrical and spatial matrix from, and it is composed by a wooden pyramidal structure coated with a reflecting material that, as people get closer, reveals and unveils the presence of an unusual space; thus, visitors are carried to a surreal and capsized dimension. The action of crossing a threshold recalls the home imaginary, cozy and protective; on the other hand, it is also a metaphor of a big door that allows to reaching an unknown and suggestive universe that is shaped thanks to the embedded video installation. Such installation involves visitors in an experience which is both emotional and original.

Inside Visionair, as a matter of fact, an embracing space created by Giancarlo Soldi is projected on the floor and reflected on the side walls; this space has welcomed plenty of visitors and projected them to a visionary dimension, by giving them a unique immersive experience. As in a kaleidoscope, internal video images have been decomposed, capsized and recomposed in new shapes, as they created an unexpected tale. The choice of using mirroring materials created an abstract image of the exterior, as changing as the light intensity reflected from the exterior, constantly depending on time and climate variations.

Watch the video

Elica Love(s) Difference is a project by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto carried out together with the cultural association he founded, namely Love Difference, and curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

“Love Difference” is a name, a slogan, a manifesto. The movement combines the universality of art with the idea of political transnationality and focuses its activity on the Mediterranean area, as it reflects the problems of global society. On the one hand, the differences among ethnic groups, religions and cultures are the cause of terrible conflicts; on the other hand, a dramatic situation is produced by the supremacy of powers that generate uniformity and level differences (…) Uniformity and difference are the two opposite terms that represent the maximum conflictual tension in the current global reality. A policy that encourages ‘loving differences’ is essential for the development of new perspectives in the entire social structure” (from Manifesto Love Difference, 2002, in “Journal 7”, Cittadellarte, Biella 2002, page 47).

The neon signs featured in the installation illuminated the façade of the company’s headquarters in Fabriano for over a year. The phrase “Love Difference”, which was echoed in 12 different languages, was an invitation to develop respect and mutual understanding between different cultures, a principle and an ideal on which to base our society, but also a reference to Elica and its branches all over the world. The project highlighted and strengthened the close collaboration between Elica/Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Michelangelo Pistoletto/Love Difference, which was successfully launched during Breathe Difference, a programme of exhibitions and workshops held at the company’s showroom in Milan during EXPO 2015.

Mass age, message, mess age is the title of the workshop organised by artist Elena Mazzi with a group of fifteen students of the Master’s Degree in Economy and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage of the Sole 24 Ore Business School, held at the Milan headquarters in via Monte Rosa. On this occasion, the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli foundation – which has been a partner of the Sole 24 Ore Business School for years – proposed Mass age, message, mess age, during which the participants, assisted by the curator and the company trainer, had the opportunity to experience the workshop carried out in the Elica company, which was at the base of the project that won the artist the 2018 Ermanno Casoli Prize. Indeed, the goal was to enable the students to have a training experience in a business environment, thereby analysing its contents and modalities.

The Mass age, message, mess age workshop, launched by the artist in 2015 as a work in progress to shed light on the dynamics underlying communication strategies, analyses in depth the transmission, reception, distortion and processing of messages. To do this, the students extracted words belonging to the everyday language of management from their own team building and classroom experiences in order to compile a glossary which would be used in a later moment. Once they had been divided into groups, they created devices that could facilitate or hinder verbal communication through the creative, albeit functional assembly of objects made of various materials, including recycled components of the devices that lie at the heart of Elica production: cooker hoods.

The chosen words and the resulting devices were used in a performance inspired by the game of Chinese whispers, which perfectly conveys how a message can be distorted, confused or interrupted.

Accidenti (Golly) is the title of the workshop conceived by artist Alessandro Dandini de Sylva and carried out together with fifteen participants, namely the teachers, researchers and project managers of the ISTUD – the most relevant private Business School of Italy – supervised by a curator and a trainer.

The workshop, which was based upon a study on photographic mistakes, was entitled Accidenti (Golly). By use of a series of experiments carried out with the avail of instant film, the participants delved into the topics of control, randomness, abstraction and the representation of landscapes. The activities revolved around the simplicity of visual perception and a quasi-artisanal printing technique, which underlay a deep reflection on the nature of photography. The resulting abstract landscapes are the outcome of a process aimed at questioning, breaking and overturning the eternal relationship among photography, reality and presentation.

The workshop ended with an exhibition featuring the framed photographs, which make part of a single, multifaceted artwork that reminds participants of the importance of working together without forgetting one’s individual background, which is paramount in a highly professional and intellectual organisation such as ISTUD.

Sillage is a project that artist Ettore Favini conceived for Elica and FEC on the occasion of
EXPO Milano 2015; it was presented inside the Save the Children pavilion to support their initiatives on education and food security.

The project title, Sillage, is inspired by the perfume terminology: it denotes the scent that perfumes leave all around us, which overcomes boundaries and spreads to the surrounding environment. In line with this definition, Sillage was developed in several steps: the first one took place within the EXPO Save the Children’s Village community vegetable garden, where famous Elica’s hood models (Audrey, Edith, Seashell) were turned into vases to plant barely, oat, almond, fennel, and anise: easily cultivable plants, which are related to the issues dear to Save the Children and, more generally, to EXPO 2015– Feed the Planet, Energy for Life. Once the plants grew, they were transformed into essences to create a special scent for Marie, Elica’s scent diffusor, for which Ettore Favini created a special cover by processing a still life image made by the vegetables composing the scent.

Sillage, the Marie limited edition for Save the Children with its original scent, was presented with a performance that took place in Palazzo Visconti in Milan. A part of the income was devolved to Save the Children’s Every One Campaign, which aims at fighting child mortality in the neediest areas of the Earth.

Watch the video

Hand is the title of the working class conceived and developed by artist Francesca Grilli together with a group of 35 Visual Arts students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino. The class was held at the Academy headquarters within the framework of the Arte, tra antropologia e orientamento sinestetico (Art at the crossroads of anthropology and synesthetic orientation) project launched in 2016 by the Visual Arts Department and conceived by Professor Massimo Vitangeli. This peculiar educational programme has seen the cooperation of curators and artists such as Filippo Berta, Angel Moya Garcia, Andrea Nacciarriti and Eugenio Viola, who worked on a series of activities aimed at involving participants.

The working class, which took place over two days, began on Monday 30^th October with the public conference entitled Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Modernising businesses by use of art. The Ermanno Casoli Foundation method), where artistic director Marcello Smarrelli presented the activity of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. The afternoon saw the artist speak about her career and works, as well as explain her poetics and technique in order to contextualise the practical activities of the following day, which were structured like a workshop on palm reading, hence the name HAND.

Francesca Grilli provided the students with the possibility to experiment with the part of her research that strays from verbal communication and focuses on the body, with the aim of enabling students to reflect on how one’s personality can be reflected by it, thereby prompting a freer, more instinctive reading. The participants learned how to take hand impressions in order to have a complete vision of all their lines and study their shape, colour, softness, and elasticity. The artist was helped by archetype expert Guido Rossetti, who supervised and guided all chirometry exercises. The final stage of the workshop saw the students read each other’s palm using the basic palm-reading techniques they had learned during the day.

The two intense days at the crossroads of art and training ended with the with the official public inauguration of the Faster than Light installation (2015), where Francesca Grilli focused on the phases delimiting existence, childhood, and old age, thereby discovering the presence of magical creatures enabling us to subvert society.

The working class continued throughout four weekly meetings in which the students could interact with Francesca Grilli and continued recording their stories,  became then five audio tracks forming a unique sound artwork intitled HANDS installed inside the Academy at the beginning of December and signed by all participants and the artist herself.

Watch the video

Breathe Difference – Aria Nuova dal Terzo Paradiso is a project by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and the cultural association he founded, Love Difference. On the occasion of EXPO Milano 2015, Elica and FEC presented this project at their showroom in Milan.

In 2003 Pistoletto, who is a protagonist of the “impoverished art” movement, wrote the Third heaven manifesto and drew its symbol: the New Infinite Sign, which is a representation of the infinite mathematical sign. This is the ideal overcoming of the conflict in which nature and artifice are opposed in modern society. On the occasion of the exhibition, Pistoletto created a new version of Nuovo Segno di Infinito in mirroring steel, which will be hung inside Elica’s showroom, creating a reflection trick. Pistoletto’s artwork ideally introduced the issues that the series of workshops and meetings, under the title Breathe Difference – Different kinds of feeding, dealt with from June 19th to June 27th in the showroom. This space was turned into a real ideas lab with the purpose of investigating the relation of mankind, environment and resource exploitation, EXPO 2015 central topics.

The laboratories’ activities resulted in a collective artwork, which was the result of the working days that more than xx young people from all over the world participated to, who answered a call that Love Difference launched, as they coordinated every activity.

Hand #2 is the title that artist Francesca Grilli gave to the workshop she and 26 Sole 24 Ore’s Business School students conceived, along with the curator and the trainer. This workshop took place at Mudec – Museo delle Culture in Milan. On this occasion, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, which has been partner with Sole 24 Ore Business school since 2012, re-proposed Hand, a project that was carried out in 2015 with a group of entrepreneurs, in order to give students the educational experience that was developed at business level, by tackling and analyzing its contents and modalities.

The workshop had the structure of a body-reading laboratory with a special focus on the hand lines interpretation: hence the title, Hand. Our hands tell a lot about ourselves: they are the body parts people mostly use to communicate; they seal new meetings and agreements; they are perfect working tools. The activity developed in two parts: during the first one, participants learned to take a hand print, through colors, so as they had an overall vision of its lines. During the second part, a hand study was carried out: shape, color, softness, touching, and elasticity. The artist, supported by a palmistry expert, aimed at making participants aware of how a person’s personality can be represented by their body, by encouraging a more instinctive and free reading. During the workshop’s final step, through the basic palmistry elements learnt during the working day, participants exchanged their mutual hand readings: the different experiences that participants lived was recorded in a soundtrack that represents the collective work that artist and participants created: this was the workshop final outcome, namely a  sound and image installation realized by artist and participants.

The experience helped at working on the value of changes and paradigm breaks, as well as on the importance of communication within a company to improve the team work.

Download press release

Musica da cucina is the title of the concert-performance that musician Fabio Bonelli conceived; it took place on December 18th, 2014 at Elica’s Headquarters in Fabriano.

The project was conceived by Fabio Bonelli, who is the founder of the creative lab People from the Mountains, of Morbegno, Sondrio province. The project was inspired by the idea of capturing sounds from a kitchen, creating a sound carpet upon which a guitar, a clarinet, an accordion and a voice weaved intimate melodies. The result was a suggestive, unusual music, an ethereal and hypnotic sound body upon which familiar and evocative sounds are inserted: water flowing, a boiler whistle, the cutlery noise on plates, and the glass jingle.

The concert-performance was then turned into an intimate and direct dialogue with the audience, which actively participated by playing pots and kitchen items and living a one-of-a-kind experience.

Watch the video

Middle-Earth. A journey inside Elica is the title of the project that photographers Fabio Barile and Francesco Neri realized for Elica, curated by Marcello Smarrelli and Alessandro Dandini de Sylva. This is a commission to the two photographers to realize a reportage in three offices of the Elica Group around the world: Querétaro (Mexico), Shengzhou (China) and Fabriano (Italy). The aim is giving complexity back to a multinational whose definition goes beyond the “company” one. It is a context in which people working there have their own identity, which the photographers’ lens investigates without rhetoric. Thirty shots showing faces, working spaces and landscape characterizing the places where the plants are located, document the constant interaction and dialogue of photographers, characters, and setting.

The shots were exhibited at Elica’s Showroom on the occasion of Fuorsisalone 2014, a collateral event to Milan Salone del Mobile; the arrangement was curated by the architecture firm stARTT.

Download the catalogue

Esercizi di stile#2 is the title of the workshop created by artist Diego Marcon that involved a group of thirty-six students of the Sole 24 Ore Business School supervised by the curator and the business trainer, which took place at the Bicocca Hangar in Milan. Such occasion saw the Ermanno Casoli Foundation – which has been a partner of the Sole 24 Ore Business School since 2012 – replicate Esercizi di stile#1, which was carried out in 2015 with twenty entrepreneurs from Marche, so as to enable the students to make a training experience which had already been tested inside a company, thereby analysing similar contents and methods.

As the title suggests, Esercizi di Stile #2 was a writing experiment: building on the book of the same name by Raymond Queneau, the participants were told a brief “starting anecdote” from which to develop three variations involving language register, genre and the physical support required to write the text. The students worked within groups, and at the end of the workshop all their contributions, reworked by the artist, were used to make a fanzine in eBook format. The variations developed by the participants were read and discussed together with pop culture, contemporary literature and social communication expert Timothy Small, who stated that form is the key element for content conveyance and explained how the different languages and genres chosen for the variations influenced the meaning and spread of the very content.

The eBook file, namely a real artist book, was numbered and signed, and then given to each participant. Finally, the business trainer ended the day turning the art metaphor into actual organisational behaviours, thereby underlining the role that such type of experience plays in reinforcing innovative thinking.

Download eBook
Esercizi di Stile #2