Against a background that is reminiscent of the Neapolitan landscape painting of the mid-18th century (close, for example, to the paintings of Jakob Philipp Hackert) and with a brushstroke (even if digital) that recalls the Goya of the years of The Parasol (1777), Agostino Rocco builds his theatrical set interpreting the myth of Pandora with a technique that, thanks to photo retouching, is intentionally forced in the assemblages but perfectly integrated into the parts that compose it. The vision the artist proposes, byaestheticising the Fabbri objects,creates an alienating effect withoutridding the scene of immediacy,rather the refined reworking allowsplay on the symbolic plane, mixingup the effects: the use of pure red,for example, indirectly citing theamarena cherry, becomes thepunctumof the image, a highlyimportant detail on whichemotionalism of the spectator isfocused.

With the energy that has always distinguished the informal language of Lidia Puglioli, the work Paesaggio antropomorfo renders sacred the mythical sense of the relationship between man and nature through a palpable, hard yet finely elegant material that becomes the vehicle for symbolic experiences; though magmatic, the representation allows a glimpse of the anthropomorphic signs of the fusion of a (imaginary) landscape left to pure carnal intuition in the features and in the metamorphic orientation of the Fabbri vases, imagined as the container of life based on the human body in the mystery of reproduction and nature in the making. The artist offers a vibrant vision,entrusting the complexity of thediscourse to the symbolic perfectionof the colour gold, the emblem ofpower, virility and seduction, with acontinuous and vigorous referenceto the “man-nature” hendiadys,enriched in its perceptive stimulationby a third element, miscellaneousyet cohesive in its “conceptualsubstance”: Fabbri amarenacherries.

With strong emotional impact, the work of Daniela Perego involves the spectator through a use of colour that enchants with the power with which it is handled, which also becomes the meta-symbolic plane of interpretation of the work: the effect is alienating and the impression is physical, a kind of hallucination of the vision, such as when you stare at the sun and then, accordingly, the existing reduces its confines, blurring. . Yet it so happensthat in Untitledevery element iswell defined in its forms, losing thereference to the function: in thisway a “friction” is created that isclose to the dream-like sphere, anoverlapping of signs that, instead of referring to themselves, breakthrough the depth of vision like aninterplay of reflected mirrors.The contortion of the proportionsincreases the perceptive deception(which in the “giantism” of theFabbri vase reaffirms the subjectivityof the element represented),cleverly combined with thechromatic contrast of the primarycolours (blue, yellow, red) in order to create a language ofallusions/illusions in which even a single poppy can be imagined as a amarena cherry.

The painterly mould of Gonzalo Orquín looks to the tradition of the Spanish realism of the 19th and 20th centuries, translating the intimate nature of everyday events into moments of measured theatricality; also in Après l’amouraprès Fabbri the delicacy of the gestures (and signs) is captured in the deepest sense of existential presence, allowing us to imagine what has happened as if the canvas were still the symbolic frame of a narration that is open to the diegetic event: “love” and “Fabbri” have the same substantial identity and, played on the rhetorical axis of metonymy, represent consumed passion, the first as a carnal act and the second as enjoyment of the senses, without ever touching the emotive force of the action in itself. The whole story is left to theobserver’s imagination; on thecanvas there only remains theeuthymia of the soul shown onceagain indirectly by an ataraxicmirror that observes the internaldimension of the eventsimperturbably.

The portrait genre is handled by Maugliani with amazing technical ability, re-reading the Italian painterly tradition with the hyper-realistic verisimilitude of photographic origin. The value added of the works lies in the particular poetic variation that investigates the internal psychology of the subject, scrutinising her mental and sentimental condition to arrive at an “unrevealed epiphany”, or one in the process of unveiling, of existential complexity. For Fabbrithe artist performs an operation of skin-deep overlapping betweenthe phytomorphic decoration of the brand and the human natureof the subject, as if the taste of theamarena cherries left a visibletrace on the bodies of those whohave them, a kind of innocent andcontagious “rash” that leaves youspeechless: and perhaps, from thisperspective, the title of the work,which exclaims Enjoy my silence!,also becomes comprehensible.

Using giant objects, which have now become the technical-linguistic expedient that characterises the artist’s poetics, the work Amarcord embodies the affective dimension associated with the Fabbri product for what it represents in history. Playing on the collective memory of those who really experienced the 1950s, those of the post-war reconstruction and of the hope that the economic miracle would soon be under way, Laveri introduces to us, as a memory that does not want to fade, the amarena cherries in full maturity and the Fabbri vase in the splendour of its own opalescence in “joint opposition” to the faded postcards from other times and the “Fabbri Cherry Brandy” poster withits colours pale, a testimony of the past.

The work by Giuseppe Guindani is a lyrical composition, with a solemn, theatrical tone in its approach and reinforced in its figurative content by a framework of citations deriving from the world of art and literature, which enrich its noetic dimension. While the stretch of sky is reminiscent of the 18th-century painting of a Tiepolo or a Rosalba Carriera on account of the “similpastel” treatment of the shadows, the gold foil on the face recalls the burial mask of Agamemnon for the fixedness of the expression and the “creased” surface, whereas the sparrow inexorably evokes the Madonna by Guercino in the Bolognese picture gallery: all demonstrating the mastery of synthesis applied by the young artist and related in turn with literary contents with a high degree of symbolism. Again the background of aVenetian 18th century and hisambiguous transfigurationsbetween being and appearance,the artist inserts the poetic visionof Sappho announcing the arrivalof Venus, goddess of love, natureand fertility, through sparrows.In Guindani’s interpretation themetaphysical delicacy of the Greektale assumes the substance of a amarena cherry, the vital fulcrumof the earth is the Fabbri vase and nature, understood as creative life force, is renewed “in reverse”regenerating itself from fruit toflower.

The very fine conceptual operation performed by Marcello Grassi, by pairing the Fabbri vase with ancient Attic ceramics inside display cases, is univocal in the message it wishes to send and does not allow for other interpretations: not only is the Fabbri object cleared of its mundane context to become part of a museum collection, but it also joins the classics, therefore, as a historical find with an absolute value to be conserved with care. The work also touches the intelligible sphere in the friction between real and unreal, becoming polysemic and leaving the poetic possibilities of response open: if, in fact, the vase painting represents an anthropological document to be used to understand the everyday habits of ancient society, it is intriguing to shift the same operation in time, wondering how the ceramography of the 20th century will be interpreted in a “distant future”, what function will be assigned to the decoration “with blue figures” and how the writing will be codified. There will probably be talk of the Fabbri myth!

This painting by Alfio Giurato is reminiscent of the Sironi of the urban peripheries, Sironi the poet of solitude of the 1920s-1930s who sang of the drama of contemporary man through the painting of industrial civilisation. The young Sicilian artist takes up the typical cold Novecentista desolation and dark setting, encapsulating the malaise in a human presence that even if evanescent and blurred, is presented with determination in its figurative Classicism, in the pose, thoughtful yet not monumental, in the quantistic reproduction of the bodies arranged as in a parade in the background as if wishing to cite a psychological undertone with a Pirandellian flavour; and it is perhaps precisely in the very famous One, No One and One Hundred Thousand that the interpretative formula that accompanies the painting metaphysically is to be found: Fabbri amarena cherries are presented to fragmentary human nature as a stable point of reference in the ceaseless flow of existence.

Massimo Giannoni performs an audacious, ironic operation with a highly symbolic value in the semiotic dynamics of this painting. The artist, who usually loves to paint places of isolation grasped in the ontological intimacy of meditation, goes beyond this for Fabbri, to atmospheric-spatial reproduction with a desecrating gesture that he himself does not hesitate to define as “irreverent”, though attributing the insolence to the small jar on the counter; the motif is simple: the place depicted is the old Pharmacy of Roccavaldina, which has now become the Museum of Pharmacy with its over 230 decorated vases from late 16th-century production, all inventoried with great devotion. But in the painting Irreverent Little Jar it is evident that something has been missed by the museum’s strict taxonomy, violating the sacredness of the space with a characteristic flourish: it is the Fabbri vase, perfectly recognisable in its forms and “heraldic” decoration, which poses in the foreground, resulting perfectly consistent with the definition of the place.

Massimo Giannoni performs an audacious, ironic operation with a highly symbolic value in the semiotic dynamics of this painting. 

The artist, who usually loves to paint places of isolation grasped in the ontological intimacy of meditation, goes beyond this for Fabbri, to atmospheric-spatial reproduction with a desecrating gesture that he himself does not hesitate to define as “irreverent”, though attributing the insolence to the small jar on the counter; the motif is simple: the place depicted is the old Pharmacy of Roccavaldina, which has now become the Museum of Pharmacy with its over 230 decorated vases from late 16th-century production, all inventoried with great devotion. But in the painting Irreverent Little Jar it is evident that something has been missed by the museum’s strict taxonomy, violating the sacredness of the space with a characteristic flourish: it is the Fabbri vase, perfectly recognisable in its forms and “heraldic” decoration, which poses in the foreground, resulting perfectly consistent with the definition of the place.

The association made by Giovanni Gasparro between “vice and amarena cherries” is perfectly appropriate to describe the excessive greed that Fabbri fruits inevitably bring about: if in everyday reality the vice is translated into “gluttony”, understood precisely as the uncontrollable desire for the pleasures of taste, in the painterly dimension of the young artist from Puglia, the theme of insatiability becomes the cue in order to tackle the disquiet of the contemporary world, grasping the psychopathological manifestation of man in a figurative way. The degradation of the human being and his brutal transformation, caused by the lack of rationality, make Gasparro operate in the sphere of a physical transfiguration close to European Expressionism for the staging of the fast-burning degenerative process; in the same way the cupidity of the body, originating from a natural (and therefore intrinsically human) need becomes the dramatic metaphor of the inner conflict that not only consumes but deforms through the irreversibility of the tragedy: we do not choose, therefore, to be “spoiled”, but it is part of our destiny to be so, without knowing how to resist the temptations.

The technical exhibitionism of “photorealism” and the deception that it generates in the use of the medium (is it a photograph or a painting?) is the poetic prerogative of the work of De Biasio who, rendering the iconicity of the object extreme, transforms the reality represented from the “truest of true” into its clear opposite: the pretence has the very precise purpose of eschewing the noema of the photographic medium, “dismantling” its meaning and opening up the work to different interpretations. With Tricolore, the Morandian origin of the composition and its “metaphysics”, understood precisely as the call to a reality to which to anchor the experience beyond the phenomenic appearance of things, is interwoven with Pop Art in the choice of object and in the painterly representation, literally exhibited and functional to a provocative expressiveness. As in the No logo series, the total elimination of every reference to the brand does not remove the recognisability of the subject, allowing a kind of “traceability” of forms that, as in the case of Fabbri products, have entered the collective imagination, becoming the symbol of a sound industrial tradition, reaffirmed in its origins also by the exclusive use of the colours of the Italian flag by the artist.

It would be reductive to sing Davoli’s praises as a hyper-realist photographer, although his technique has indeed reached levels of refined quality, demanding more than a quick mention for this, but rather deserving an accurate analysis of the use of the medium; but to dwell on this aspect would mean not entering his work in depth and restricting our considerations to a polished (and very captivating) surface sheen. The Fabbri Still Life, mindful of the 16th-century painterly tradition (on account of its careful arrangement of the elements and its luministic style in a Caravaggio mould) is a visual proposition that engages the thought above all through the oxymoronic arrangement of the amarena cherries: the amarena on the table, shrivelled and in solitary natural decadence even though just picked, like on a mortuary bed, is contrasted with the material splendour of the amarena cherries inside the Fabbri fruit bowl; the result is a conceptual system close to the Vanitas that the still life represents by tradition, but the surprise is the new allegorical interpretation of the Fabbri amarena cherry, which becomes the emblem of immortality.

Pursuing the creative approach of the recovery of waste materials, for Fabbri the artistic duo Tironi- Yoshida work with the mosaic technique, reworking an image on the figurative plan thanks to the fragments of a vase for amarena cherries. The work Stubborn Girl plays on the semantic aspect that is tested out through the double meaning of the title: “stubborn”, in fact, means “obstinate in one’s opinions”, but at the same time it takes up the material of which the work is composed, crockery; with this punning technique, adapted to the context in an original way, the slippage of meaning takes shape that raises the work beyond simple homophony with humorous effect, opening the exegesis to a more daring interpretation on the plane of existential fragmentation: those who do not want to modify their own behaviour run the risk, when faced with their own irrationality, of the destruction of their individuality, while those who present themselves to the world with the positive gift of wisdom, intrinsic in the perfectly complete cherry, survive the destruction

Just one more…a title that more than ever expresses the “pathological attitude” of human beings when faced with the small red fruit of the amarena cherry…and indeed it is difficult to resist the unconditional call of the next taste and the one after that: when you start it is hard to stop and in his terracotta Cornini has very capably represented the absolute truth of the saying “one is never enough”; but even more, in an everyday moment of pleasant relaxation in an armchair, Cornini has grasped the intimacy of the individual and her relations with the sentimental fabric; the result is a psychological investigation and an introspective photograph of the existential character of mankind.

With a sacred combination, with an intriguing style rich in emotional intensity, Roberta Coni compares the Fabbri vase to Pandora’s box (which is called a vase in Italian, rather than a box), alluding to the myth in a symbolic vein and reinterpreting it with the voluptuousness that the Fabbri amarena cherry fruit encapsulates. If Pandora is driven by curiosity to open the vase given her by Zeus, unaware of the ill-fated consequences that her gesture would bring about, Roberta Coni concentrates precisely on the instant following the opening, focusing on the moment as the maximum expression of awareness and therefore as the genesis of the solution of rescue from the evils “released” that would strike humanity. With a citation reminding us of the school of Fontainebleau (Anonymous, Gabrielle d’Estrées with one of her sisters 1595), the “Fabbri Pandora” represents redemption: paraphrasing Dostoyevsky, it is now “femininity that will save the world”; hope, the last resort of disobedience, is woman and amarena cherries. It is sweet and sensual and exercises a compulsive attraction.

Girolamo Ciulla’s poetics make reference to an ancient languagewith its roots in Magna Graecia: hence the eternal, mythological meaning of his works, which become mighty, silent presences, not so much to be scrutinised but to be revered as though they were full-blown steles to be worshipped. The sensation provoked by the Untitled work is the same, but here what becomes a find with an archaeological air is the famous jar for Fabbri amarena cherries interpreted with formal synthesis and without ostentation in its details, except for one: the name of the firm, which, inlaid into travertine, becomes the emblem of a link to which to anchor the memory, totally immersed in a suspension of indeterminateness provoked by the material, which is capable according to the author – of “giving stability to the form without attenuating that impression of crumbling that must have a figure in the memory”. With technical mastery, the archaic severity of the forms and the flash of colour of the brand become the expression of the values embodied by Fabbri, who always combines tradition and innovation.

This installation by Gianluca Chiodi plays on the participation of the spectators who approach the work, to be totally seduced by it, moving in on the Fabbri vase like “voyeurs” peering through a keyhole. Indeed, the artist’s provocation lies precisely in having grasped the particular connection between the pleasures of life, highlighting the attitudes that provoke embraces, which create a universal gestural-linguistic form that is understood by every being. Following the thread of the worldwide sharing of emotions, like an exegetic apostille, the artist inserts the practice of memory, since the operation of observation unexpectedly reveals an image from another time: the “amarena cherry pitters” from the early 20th century return from the past forming a passage of contemporary art, exactly like Fabbri, who, even though it is a modern avant-garde firm, displays its roots that are well and proudly planted in history

Andrés David Carrara proposes sixteen paintings repetitively reproducing the famous Fabbri amarena cherry jar: the quantum enhancement of the object and the particular point of view lead to an alienating perspective that means the realistic dimension is lost and replaced by a dream-like content. The suggestions dictated by the “different repetition” and by the virtuous foreshortened view open up the interpretation to a route that alters the direct observation of the everyday object in favour of a new presence reinterpreted by the symbolic values that it embodies: for this reason the Fabbri jar becomes Like a star, the stellar emblem of navigation beyond the Earth but also, more simply taking up the figurative meaning of the word, production excellence, a “star” of the Italian culinary tradition.

Apparently amusing, as the title itself is intended to underline, Giulia Caira’s work is in reality a representation with sarcastic content that reinterprets the Odyssey in a contemporary vein, giving the mythological story a suitable tone for current events. The sensational aspect of the work, close in its setting to Manet’s subversive Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, lies not so much in the hypostasis between man and animal by Circe but in the narrative distortion made by the artist, who transforms the drama of the metamorphosis into a moment devoted to pleasure, without worries and to be enjoyed with all the senses. While Ulysses used the herb “moly” in order to be unharmed by the sorceress’ spell, the men in his crew preferred to submit to the charm of magic, rather than miss the experience – even though irreversible – of participating in Circe’s banquet and repeating the “love feast”, even if as pigs. With absolute complicity with regard to the values represented by Fabbri, Giulia Caira attributes to amarena cherries the magical and irrefractable power that it is impossible to withstand, even to the detriment of one’s own individuality, thus creating a kind of teleological document affirming that the ultimate goal of beings is pleasure.

In the work ABW327 we can read the photographic origins of Andrea Boyer before he arrived at painting in the late 1980s; this professional clarification is useful if we are to understand the poetic senses of the artist, who is close, also in his drawings, to the still life, a genre traditionally capable of gleaning the most important attributes of the object represented.
The traditional ceramic vase with its unmistakable decorations becomes the subject of the document analysed by the artist with a partial detail, which, by its very nature as a synecdoche, makes the part the mental equivalent of a very large and complex whole of an object presence represented in its totality: what confirms the almost  metaphysical progression of thought and the imagination is the technique of the pencil drawing played out exclusively around the chromatic range of black and white and with a marked arrangement of light and shadow that decentralises the figurative dimension in favour of an uncanny translation.

With the painterly delicacy that distinguishes the activity of Giuseppe Bombaci, the work Scempio. Donna che guarda un vaso (Ruin. Woman looking at a vase) alludes, solely in the title, to the myth of Pandora, but without leaving on the canvas any reference to the consequences of the ill-fated action told by Greek mythology. Anything but: what prevails in the work is a sense of euthymia that eschews the drama and is perfectly combined with the game of apparitions, skilfully mastered thanks also to the predominant use of the grey scale that the author admits to using for its normalising effect and for its intrinsic capacity to give balance. The linguistic system is immediate because the image is built up with already existing and recognisable elements, as if the artist were seeking the sources from which to draw the pretext to make painting in reality: in the case of Scempio, the face, the vase and the Fabbri decoration have a phenomenic character that is gracefully inserted into the abstract scheme of the background.

In interpreting Fabbri amarena cherries, Luigi Benedicenti, the undisputed master of hyperrealism, plays with a theme that is very dear to him, that of culinary sweetness, which he interprets poetically as a habit of the Italian middle class. In Sara, le amarene e la bandana del Pirata Pacioccone(Sara, theamarena cherries and the bandanaof the Pirate Pacioccone), therepresentation takes up the traditionof the “painting within a painting”,merging the naturalistic image andreality in a relationship that stressesits short-circuiting nature, thanksalso to the use of colour. The scenetherefore proposes an alienatingeffect, not so much through theoverlapping planes of the image butrather through the misalignment ofthe perceptive spheres, which are“sweetened” a priori by the Fabbriobject, the emblem of goodness and “genuine beauty”.Releasing the noetic abandonment ofthe artist’s vision is the very title of thework which, with a citing reference,underlines the meaning of the sceneset: the bandana worn by Sara is thatof the pirate Pacioccone, the star of acartoon series broadcast in Italy from1965 to 1976 to publicise Fabbriproducts, and amarena cherries, with their double figurative presence,become the sensory apex, theprotagonists that have an impact onthe senses and, for this reason, arethe undisputed symbols of pleasure.

This work by Nicola Bolla coincides with a gesture with the flavour of Duchamp, in which the object reigns supreme, filling itself with other values with respect to its simple formal content: the technique of covering the elements of the sculptural representation with Swarovski crystals, in addition to being the distinctive language of his poetics, is – according to the author – none other than the desire to “render extreme the idea of the ephemeral and in some way of the uselessness that sometimes resides in the artist’s work”. With Untitled it is the Fabbri vase that is radicalised in its external form, becoming the refined emblem of its precious content.

Chiara Albertoni represents the process of transformation of the amarena cherry from fruit to delight, managing to portray the process in the flow, even if immobilised on the canvas, through alchemical symbology.

And it is precisely in the etymology of alchemy that we can detect the artist’s finesse in interpreting the Fabbri philosophy conceived in its purest original essence, ì whether this is the “philosopher’s stone” according to the Arabian linguistic tradition or a “juice to make gold” as referred to by Chinese terminology: in both solutions there remains the mystical flavour of an aspiration to win over with the wise skills that only carefully chosen craftsmen can exercise, metaphorically embodied by Fabbri. Nigredo (decomposition of the material), albedo (sublimation of the material) and rubedo(recomposition of the material), the three principal stages of alchemical transformation, are symbolised by the colour, offering the taste of a magic that has taken place since 1905 in the evocative power of amarena cherry red.

Paul Beel is a master of the contemporary portrait, not so much because his subjects are immersed  in daily life but rather on account of his capacity to innovate a genre  that has its roots in the history of art and is therefore strictly codified  and difficult to re-propose. Faithful to his own poetics, in D.I.Y.Amarena Bangthe artist presents a view playing with the ambiguoussensation (also confirmed by thetitle of the work) provoked by anoetic short-circuit createdbetween the drama of the sceneand the explosive sweetness of theamarena cherries, these toopresented as a portrait, no longertherefore the object of the narration but a living, dynamicsubject, closely involved in whatappears to be a real moment ofecstatic climax, spaceless andtimeless: a dream-like parenthesisentrusted to the senses.The sacredness in the ascent of thegaze that encounters drops of rain(or pleasure?) as though the hole inthe wall were nothing if not an idealand imaginary journey provoked bythe metaphorical explosion ofFabbri goodness: what emerges isa secular holiness associated withthe material principles that touchbeing, but which are not profane forall this, rather they are exactly“aesthetic” which, after all, meansprecisely what is perceived with thesenses.

With that certain dose of irony that distinguishes the work of the artistic duo, this work plays on the twin concepts of contents-container, leaving to the imagination the evocative power of Fabbri taste. 

Telling the story is the marble reproduction of a big box for transporting the amarena cherries, the “ecumenical symbol” of a company evolution that has known how to renew itself, penetrating every market and reaching out all over the world. The metamorphosis is not formal but material: the humility of the packaging re-establishes the conceptual short-circuit in the effective presence of the skilful working of marble that Peducci/Savini transform into a slightly out-of-context casket, a detail that is not negligible, because if, as Aby Warbug said “God is in the details”, the gesture suggested by the form opens up to the imagination that brushes the senses.