The iconic Commutatore, on display at the exhibition, reveals an alternative way of experiencing urban space, looking at the world from an atypical perspective. Ugo La Pietra loves to explore reality by unhinging its values and approved spaces. Architect, designer, artist, director, editor and teacher he doesn’t like the division between disciplines but appreciates craftsmanship and local traditions and particularly identifies ceramic as a ductile and stimulating material, that blends art and technique. Above all, he links creation to a specific place, where you “ look for the form that comes from our experiences instead of from imposed patterns”.
Ugo La Pietra 2020
at Contemporary
Cluster
Established in 1927, The Rometti factory in Umbertide, Perugia is not only a place of experience and breeding ground for experimentation, but also one of modernity sought and achieved through the design and empirical contribution of multifaceted artists such as Dante Baldelli, Corrado Cagli, Leoncillo Leonardi, Ambrogio Pozzi, Carlos Pazos, Lilian Lijn, Chantal Thomass and Kenzo Takada. The 2020 collection continues the journey started by Ugo La Pietra in 2018 with the colossal Totems, the 24 Pezzi collection- hand made vases, candelabra and containers, and finally the Tattooed Hands series, where he adopts the bold language of the street. They are complete expressions of the artist's acute and visionary sensitivity and close collaboration with Artistic Director Jean Christophe Clair and the Rometti craftsmen. The dialogue of white with black, the increased dimensions of the objects, and the refined techniques of frescoing and engraving on the engobe enhance the totemic sacredness of the objects and the tribal language of the graffitied hands. Free from the formal constraints of mass production and market forces, the 2020 collection deploys objects with fluid and spiral lines that combine the elegance of glossy black and gold glazes with the opaque finish of the natural red clay, and reveals an original and open aesthetic dimension reflected in the names of some of the works - Continuus, Non Stop, In Progress.
