An outsize tin container and a colour that has nothing to do with those one might expect (neither the red amarena colour of the sweet itself nor the blue and white of its famous jar). So where is the evocation of the Fabbri trademark? In the decorative motif. Applied by hand like a sort of transfer, this is used with such extreme minimalism that it serves to hint (but no more) at something familiar. China Black is far from being typical of Flavio Favelli’s work. It belongs to a new stage in the career of the Florentine artist, with him no longer forming assemblages of the tasteless things he encountered as a child in the bourgeois homes of his relatives. Made up of abandoned objects, hisoriginal installations had striven toevoke memories of the recent pastvia the things which had “inhabited”that past: his grandmother’s bottles of vermouth; the coloured tissuepaperwrappers of Sicilian oranges; old wrought iron gates; junkshopfurniture; ceramic Fabbri jars. Now,these installations are becoming morestylised and simplified. From anintimate personal analysis of his ownexistence, Favelli is passing on to amore political exploration of thecollective world of trademarks, thenew “patrons” of the contemporary.Re-interpreted by the artist the mass-produced Fabbri jars thusgenerate authentic fakes which playupon both the recognition andmisinterpretation of the artistic sign(that is, the identity of the artist).