Italian ceramics in Siegburg
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Paolo Porelli and Mattia Vernocchi are currently exhibiting in Stadtmuseum Siegburg as part of the exhibition entitled “Becoming: between material, history and nature” until 30 August 2026.
Paolo Porelli (Rome, 1966) began his artistic experience as a painter, taking his degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, before turning to ceramic sculpture in response to a need for physicality, volume and chromatic material. According to Porelli “I have always used an anthropomorphic figure as a metaphor for reality. An amalgamation of personal experience, perceptual aspects and art-historical idioms.”
With his sculpture, Porelli aims to provide access to an archetypal dimension of reality, condensing surrealist elements, pop proliferations and archaic symbolism in his visual language. His anthropomorphic inventions result in a sense of estrangement of the figurative, creating iconographic absurdities and a new mythology of the present. With his human repertoire, Porelli emphasises the critical issues facing contemporary mankind as well as the complex phenomena that underlie society, including the unsustainable constructs of civilisation and its incompatibility with nature.
Mattia Vernocchi (Cesena, 1980) graduated from the Ballardini Institute of Ceramic Art in Faenza in 2001. He opened his own studio in Gambettola, where he experimented with different techniques and various materials including iron, glass and concrete. In 2006, he won the inaugral European Ceramic Context award at the Bornholm Art Museum in Denmark. Vernocchi held his first solo exhibition, Pat de durmi, at the Palazzo del Ridotto Gallery in Cesena in 2007, before other solo exhibitions followed at the Gasparelli Gallery in Fano and the L’affiche Gallery in Milan. He enjoys a deep relationship with the locally sourced materials he uses to express his art. He currently lives and works in the small town of Longiano near the Adriatic.
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“Becoming: between material, history and nature” in Stadtmuseum Siegburg until 30 August 2026
Markt 46
53721 Siegburg
https://stadtmuseum-siegburg.de/