Art Factory 2025

With Art Factory 2025, the PdB Gallery Contemporary Art inaugurates the second edition of a series of exhibitions that intends to continue to propose a reflection on the value of ceramics as a cultured, intimate, contemporary and conceptually fertile artistic language.

On display, the works of Letizia Calori, Susana Ljuljanovic, Mirco Denicolò and Simona Ragazzi. The exhibition invites the public to explore the eclectic creative universe of these artists, selected for their ability to convey emotions and reflections through different languages ????but, for this occasion, a single expressive medium: ceramics.

Art Factory 2025 is a contemporary art exhibition that was born inside the atelier Paese dei Balocchi, an arts and crafts laboratory founded in 1993, where art develops as shared research, technical experimentation and expressive growth in Bologna. The bond between the selected artists and the atelier is deep and rooted, testifying to its function as an incubator of talents and a place where art becomes research, sharing, experimentation and continuous growth.
As in the first edition, this year too the selection of Art Factory 2025 reflects the variety and richness of the creative experience that the Paese dei Balocchi factory has been able to build in over three decades. The exhibition is conceived on three levels of interpretation: the first reveals the bond between the artists and the atelier, which continues to be an environment of growth and dialogue; the second invites you to discover the individual research of each artist and their unique vision of contemporary art; the third level is dedicated to the observation of the personal use of ceramic material by each artist.

Letizia Calori, a multifaceted artist, uses traditional media and new technologies to transform common objects and materials into evocative works. Through sculptures, installations, performances and writing, she investigates the relationship between corporeality and architecture, forms of power and vulnerability, social structures and fallibility, using space and the surrounding environment as a habitat in which to insert personal narratives and address intimate and visceral issues.

Susana Ljuljanovic, whose practice includes installations, videos, performances, painting and sculpture, elaborates a reflection on nature and its contemplation, considered primary sources of inspiration. The artist develops a constant dialogue with the natural world, generating works that become instruments of absorption, containment and transformation.

Mirco Denicolò, visual artist and ceramist, combines drawing, storytelling and matter in his research in an intimate and deeply personal language. His works in “ceramic paper”, thin sheets of stoneware treated like pages to be drawn, contain images that speak of memory, emotion and poetry.

Simona Ragazzi presents the works Oltrenatura, a plastic reflection on the relationship between man and nature, through vegetal forms in ceramic that evoke the tension between artifice and organic. His research blends matter, biology and symbolism, giving life to landscapes suspended between reality and vision, poetic and disturbing at the same time.

Art Factory 2025 represents not only a significant milestone in the gallery's cultural and educational programming, but also an opportunity to reaffirm ceramics as a complex, cultured and fully contemporary means of expression, capable of connecting past and present, technique and vision, matter and thought.

The exhibition will be open from May 23 to July 25, 2025 at the PdB Gallery in Bologna, from Monday to Friday, from 2:00 pm to 7:30 pm. For visits outside of these hours, it is possible to book an appointment.

We look forward to accompanying you on your visit!