On the occasion of the 22nd Contemporary Day, promoted by AMACI, Solimene Art presents Archaic Contemporary, an exhibition originally conceived to mark the centenary of the birth of ceramic artist Matteo Zauli and presented at the Carlo Zauli Museum in Faenza during Argillà. The project is now being presented at Solimene Art in Cava de’ Tirreni as an opportunity to bring together memory, materiality and contemporary artistic research.
Material, gesture and form become tools through which to reinterpret the memory and heritage of ceramics, transforming them into a form of research capable of engaging with the present.
The exhibition resonates with “Geographies of Contemporaneity”, the theme of the 2026 Contemporary Day: geography is not only a matter of places, but also of the cultures, memories and languages that shape and traverse our time.
The move from the original venue at the Carlo Zauli Museum to the spaces of Solimene Art in Cava de’ Tirreni becomes part of the exhibition itself: two cities deeply rooted in ceramic culture meet through contemporary artistic practice and research. The exhibition project moves into a new territory and engages with a different context, demonstrating how contemporaneity can emerge precisely through the encounter between roots, territories and new languages.
The exhibition invites visitors to consider material and artworks as spaces of passage: places where past and present, local and global, memory and innovation can coexist and generate new possibilities for interpretation.
Participation in the Contemporary Day represents an opportunity to open this dialogue to a wider audience, as well as an invitation to consider ceramics not only as heritage and tradition, but as a living language, capable of crossing eras and territories, transforming itself and generating new forms of expression.
