13.04 / 27.04. 2014
Palazzo Pfanner
via degli Asili 33, Lucca

Open Pfanner presents April 13 the exhibition Fuori Fuori of Beatrice Speranza and Emy Petrini which will continue until April 27, opening every day from 10.00 to 18.00 with a lunch break.

Fuori Fuori depicts the outcome of various artistic experiments that start from an inner search. “Works that do not want to give answers or certainties, but to impose questions, draw attention and invite the man to question its nature, the present, urging him to get involved.”

In 2009 the meeting between Beatrice Speranza, photographer, and Emy Petrini, floral designers: it is the start of an artistic and emotional partnership, which brings the two artists to collaborate in the design and construction of large installations capable of combining nature, design and photography in an attempt to capture the dreamlike imaginative and which can be generated only by the observation of the real world …

In the project Presenze of Beatrice Speranza, the embroidery finds new expression and space in the photographs: stems from research of attention, from a desire to reveal small hidden presences, to relive the magic of the silent gestures that took place in the darkroom.

Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe
JOURNEY AT PALAZZO PFANNER
curated by Tiziana Tommei

Few steps among the labyrinthine and teeming alleys, to find themselves, like a character in a Disney cartoon, in a place that resembles what we imagine to be the wonderland: Palazzo Pfanner. The place and its history are unique. A palace with baroque garden – attributed to the genius of Filippo Juvarra – which is located between the medieval urban layout and the sixteenth-century walls. It was 1846: Felix Pfanner, Austrian beer maker, comes to town at the behest of the Duke of Lucca, Carlo Ludovico of Bourbon, and he rented the cellars and the garden of the palace, once belonging to the Controni family. In a short time, thanks to the proceeds of his activity, purchases the entire structure, which takes its name, becoming the seat of the historic brewery. Today the residence is the home of the Pfanner family and center of events. The “Open Palazzo Pfanner” event is a kind of aristocratic Déjeuner sur l’herbe, enriched by an exhibition: “Fuori Fuori”. You enter from the side of the walls exceptionally and immediately inside the elegant orangery, then cross the garden and then moving to the palace. The effect is amazing. An explosion of art, life and culture: jazz music, design and photography. All perfectly cast to determine truly a magical and extraordinary atmosphere. You walk in the garden and you come across an architecture made of natural elements: branches of Cornus and willow to form a “volcano” of 3 meters high and 2 in diameter. Emy Petrini is its creator. Floral designers, able to create spectacular and emotional sculptural installations using components taken from nature. Flowers, shrubs, leaves and plant materials are the alphabet of her art, which feeds on different experiences – from botany to set design, from engineering design – to design and implement the most incredibly baroque theatrical machines in the same location for this occasion occupy. Singular is this conjunction: the link between the research of typical seventeenth-century wonder, their reality of Palazzo Pfanner, and the striking visual impact of the works of this artist of our time. The plant intersections are studied and proposed through the photographic images of Beatrice Speranza. Photographer e designer, that in “Presenza” comes to pierce the photograph to give it new presence, through a slow and do weighted, that allows you to relive the rhythms of the darkroom. So the thread becomes form, and proposes new reality, more complex, profound and intimate. Next to wire the light: both artists play with light bulbs and propose in size and assembled in heterogeneous materials: olive wood (“Tre passi”), branches of willow pruning, Cornus and olive tree (“Penelope”) and pipes rubber, electrical wires and lamp holders (“Shower”). What is most striking, however, is another. Two photos, huge, one in black and white, the other in color. Two photograph interpretations of two works of flower design, “Il Volatore” and “Il Nido”. Beatrice Speranza looks and represents the work of the other ‘half of the apple’, Emy Petrini. The circle closes perfectly. Everything is in its place, according to an order that is given by an artistic, creative and life, that underlies two different personalities, strong, defined, but at the same time able to join in something unique, consistent and unmistakable. What should induce reflection? The strength of a union between different arts, intelligence and the ability to carry each their own path, succeeding in intersecting it and to enrich it with the knowledge of the work of the other. An exchange that we hope to be more and more heated unmistakable.