For the participation of Riccardo Monachesi in the R.A.W. 2022 edition, at the C.R.E.T.A. Rome studio, we decided to present a series of unpublished bowls entitled Do ut des 4.0. As the title suggests, this selection is the continuation of a narrative that began in 2019 with the Roman exhibition Claustromania. The bowl, due to its natural shape, contains both the significance of offering and that of receiving, to which the Latin title refers.
As Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero writes in the catalogue of the Claustromania exhibition: "The sequence of bowls, free in their soft and casual form, retain traces of gold and are well situated in one of Riccardo Monachesi's most successful artistic directions, the one that leads to serial sequence."
From the text by Maurizio Calvesi in the catalogue of the Terramota exhibition: "The dimensions of the cups, vases and bottles shaped by Riccardo Monachesi are easy to understand, like functional objects . . . On the other hand, with surprise we discover the minimal measurements of their surfaces and volumes, as of objects made to be picked up and handled.
This love of the small format could derive from that same admiration for Morandi that the arrangement of Monachesi's bottles suggests, or only imagines. The oxides that decorate the cups transfer the traditional decorative pattern to the signs and stains of the Informal, denouncing a complicity between the functional and the artistic. They are a practical embodiment of aesthetics."
BIO
In 1977, in Nino Caruso's studio, Riccardo Monachesi begins to use clay as a medium for making art. In 1980 he graduated in architecture and from 1981 he began to exhibit his works in galleries. In 1994 an exhibition at Studio Bocchi, "up-dates" the perception of ceramics from a material linked solely to the world of craft, to reconsider it as a fine art medium. A solo show at the Italian Cultural Institute in Vienna followed in 2009; in 2011 the National Gallery of Modern Art placed 20 ceramics made with Elisa Montessori at the Boncompagni Ludovisi Museum; followed in 2014 by a solo exhibition presented by Maurizio Calvesi and in 2015 by a collective exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art. Also in 2015 he created a site-specific work for the Archaeological Museum in Lipari and two other works in the Italian Embassy in Chile. In 2017 the Museum of Ceramics in Viterbo dedicated a solo exhibition to him curated by Francesco Paolo del Re. In 2019 in Rome at Studio Canova with a solo show he proposes a site-specific work that takes up the emotion of Cupid and Psyche. The collective exhibition at the cloister of Sant'Alessio in Rome and another collective in Naples, at the Museum of Ceramics, close 2019. In 2020 a solo show was held in Rome at the Palazzo delle Pietre and in 2021 a collective one at the Boncompagni-Ludovisi Museum, Castel Sant'Angelo and the National Library of Rome.
Other numerous group exhibitions in 2022 in Rome, Milan for Design Week, Rovereto at the M.A.R.T, Rome at the Spazio Field of Palazzo Brancaccio and others.
