Casati Prize
Laboratorio Casati's constant dialogue with contemporary art, stimulated by the exclusive salon framed by the estate's centuries-old olive trees, finds its highest expression in the annual Casati Prize. Aimed at discovering artists, each year the competition brings to light a new Ampolla d'Artista, created in collaboration with exclusive partners who share the same vision and mission.
Archivio Paolini and Casati Laboratory renew their partnership for the promotion of a collection of artists' oil bottles, announcing the second edition of the "Casati international Art Prize".
After the success of the first edition, which saw the triumph of the Francesco De Molfetta from Milan – whose works have been exhibited in Tokyo, Madrid and Besançon, at the Triennale in Milan and at the Moca in Los Angeles – with the work SANTolio, also this year artists will be left maximum freedom of expression, in the name of an inspiration that derives from the refined aesthetic caliber that has always distinguished the realities involved.
It is in fact an international competition open to all artists without any exclusion of languages for the creation of the visual concept, packaging, label or sculptural intervention for the top-of-the-range bottle of oil from Tenuta Casati in Saludecio, a limited edition gourmet product already awarded the prestigious O.L.E.A. 2021.
To participate in the competition, it is necessary to send the application form fully completed and accompanied by the relative attachments to the address direzione@casatilaboratory.it by 31 March 2023. NFT content is also allowed.
The winner will be awarded a cash prize of 150 euros for each of the 50 specimens. The communication will also be transmitted digitally on the Casati Labsocial channel Casati Lab | Luxury oil.
The presentation of the work, subject to objective impediments, is scheduled for the first week of July, in an exclusive event to be held in the evocative setting of Tenuta Casati, among the centuries-old olive trees of Saludecio.
ARTIST'S AMPOULES
To date, the Ampolle d'Arista that have come to life thanks to the synergy between Laboratorio Casati, artists and excellent craftspeople are:
STUDY FOR OCYPETE, BRONZE MICROCASTING WAX DISPOSABLE POLISHED GOLD.
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The 2024 edition of the Casati International Art Prize, awards the work Ocypete, 2024 by Fabrizio Cotognini, an artist from the Marche region, born in 1983, and former winner of the Cairo Prize.
Prometheus of collectors for that essential je ne sais quoi, capable of combining archeological alchemical symbology with a modern attitude by charging it with a galvanic energy by restoring a vibrant chromaticism, Cotognini has paid homage to an ancestral feminine spirit, a complex artifact such as that of the harpy, a powerful figure linking worlds, here designing a capsule for ampoules that "procures the emotion of a fragrance (...) that evokes a sensation and inspires a synesthesia," presented in shades of shiny gold, matte gold, matte silver blue, gunmetal silver and matte copper.
Cotognini has thus managed to place himself in direct consonance with the meditative spirit of the Maison, in that credendo vides that moves its initiatives. In the sphere of feminine worldliness, of that impetuous and sublime elegance that characterizes Casati's creative light, Cotognini evokes indirectly, the Marchesa Casati, whose flânerie hovers among the languages akin to her elective style.
STUDY FOR OCYPETE, BRONZE MICROCASTING WAX DISPOSABLE POLISHED GOLD.
STUDY FOR ECLISSI, 2023, BRASS SCULPTURE, GOLDEN CETONIA.
Eclissi, gold and shadows.
Continue the project to enrich the collection of limited edition Casati cruets created by a contemporary artist.
The Artist chosen for the year 2023 is Giulia Manfredi, winner of the fifth edition of the Cramum Prize, whose essential trait is material experimentation in which classical motifs and technological innovation converge, between naturalistic metamorphosis and abstraction, creator of microcosms in which the possibilities of automatism, change and order coexist.
Giulia Manfredi has realised for the year 2023 Eclissi, Gold and Shadows
Eclissi, which gives the work its name, is the otherwise impossible union of light and shadow, a portentous marriage of dichotomies. The cetonia aurata, a winged being, symbolises the union of the terrestrial and celestial spheres. The moon and the sun, light and darkness that in working together generate life. From the universal, to the intimate, in the words of Carl Gustav Jung the ego depends on its shadow, the conscious on the subconscious, the visible on the invisible. The path of the human being is not towards perfection but towards the union of opposites, precisely in the reconciliation of light and darkness lies a state of spiritual elevation and true identification of the self, only by incorporating the shadow can we find the gold it conceals.
STUDY FOR ECLISSI, 2023, BRASS SCULPTURE, GOLDEN CETONIA.
STUDY FOR SANTolio, 2022, FUSION IN BRONZE TO GOLDEN WAX.
The ambition is to create a collection of limited edition glass ampoules designed and created by an annually selected artist.
The artist chosen for 2022 is the Milanese Francesco De Molfetta, aka 'DEMO', a multifaceted personality with an international curriculum - his works have been exhibited in Tokyo, Madrid and Besançon, at the Triennale in Milan and at Moca in Los Angeles - who has created a profoundly evocative work-container.
In the sign of avant-garde design, following in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaist artists, DEMO chose a clasped-hand pose with a sacred evocation for the work, naming it 'SANTolio'.SANTolio“.
Inspired by the Beloved Saint whose hands have remained uncorrupted over the centuries and who lived here in this land, leaving a white, magnetic, powerful energy still strongly perceptible, the work is intended to be an enlightened reading of a fluid for the soul that in the transformative ascesis between physics and metaphysics, along the phenomenology of fragrances, arrives at a chromatic symbolism.
A small gold gem, made in an edition, crowns each opaque black glass vessel. The distillate is as precious as the jewel that holds it and must be manipulated each time to access the ampoule, in the repetition of a meditative gesture to enhance the sacredness of a 'philosopher's' gold in a perfect alchemy of synthesis and senses.
STUDY FOR SANTolio, 2022, FUSION IN BRONZE TO GOLDEN WAX.
