Ludovico Pratesi

From 21 October 2017 to 21 January 2018 the Church of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa hosts the installation of the artist Flavio Favelli entitled Corona.

Organized by the Municipality of Pisa in collaboration with the University of Pisa, the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Cooperativa Atlante Servizi Culturali, curated by Ludovico Pratesi, the installation was designed by Flavio Favelli specifically for this place and is the third of a series of site specific interventions by great national and international artists made inside the small church, overlooking the lungarni of Pisa.

The installation of Flavio Favelli consists of a construction in the shape of an irregular cube, made with cardboard assembled to form a kind of building with erased marks, abraded lettering, caesura and infill. The installation takes its name from the packaging of the Mexican beer Corona, one of the few brands of Central America that has become global. Corona is therefore inspired not by ideal sacred architectures, but by the ideal pantheon of the artist who draws on the world of products and brands of multinationals, which are now part of people's lives and influence it, just like the arts of the past. His research refers, in fact, to everyday life and his personal experience, with the idea of ​​creating, through his works and installations, a physical and mental space that modifies the perception of the spectators. So inside the space of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa, a gothic temple almost in the balance on the river bank, the installation of Favelli intends to create a free conversation between apparently high things and apparently low things. "Unlike the minimal interventions of Wolfgang Laib and Richard Nonas, Flavio Favelli has chosen to present a building inside Santa Maria della Spina, a sort of temple similar to the Sacello Rucellai by Leon Battista Alberti in Florence. A temple inspired by the artist's imagination, which transforms personal experience into a source of inspiration for one's own art "underlines the curator Ludovico Pratesi.

Flavio Favelli, born in Florence in 1967, lives and works in Savigno, Bologna. After graduating in Oriental History at the University of Bologna, he began his artistic activity by taking part in the Link Project (1995-2001). He took part in the TAM residence in Pietrarubbia, directed by Arnaldo Pomodoro in 1995, and at the Superior Course of Visual Arts at the Ratti Foundation with Allan Kaprow in 1997.
He has exhibited in public and private spaces in Italy and abroad, including the MARCO and MAXXI in Rome, the Marino Marini Museum in Florence and the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato. He designed and built two bar installations operating at MAMbo and MARCA di Catanzaro and two permanent public areas: Vestibule in the ANAS Venue of Palazzetto Foscari and Sala d'Attesa in the Pantheon of Bologna inside the Certosa Monumental Cemetery. He participated in two Venice Biennials, the one curated by Francesco Bonami and the one curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.
He has participated in seminars and conferences at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, Brera in Milan at the Polytechnic of Turin, at the University of Bolzano and Bologna, at the Rome Quadriennale and at numerous other public and private institutions. His works are present in the main public and private collections, in Italy and abroad.