There is a subtle dialogue in the space between the photographed location and the interpretation of the artist who expresses the image of Amarena Fabbri in a very creative way. This is the first time that Stefano Scheda has worked with an interior setting, and the inspiration came from the idea of the “commission”.
The artist has created an instable balance between the scene, a confessional inside a church, and an unlikely combination, a curtain decorated with the pattern of the Fabbri jar. This is an elegant game of cross-references. Gluttony is an intriguing short-circuit of the unusual combination with the sweetness of the amarenas that takes everyone back to their childhood. The cross-contamination of images is part of the artist’s style. In the photograph, which was taken in a live setting, without any post-production alterations, the interior is transformed into an incoherent setting. The artist creates performance photography, interpreted poetically. He thought up, designed and created the curtain, the paradigmatic motif of his “open work”. The decoration, taken from the Fabbri jar, is a way of paying tribute, which, like plagiarism, has always gone hand in hand with artistic creation. The final result is a short-circuit of reality without changing its objective physical appearance, playing on the knowledge and emotions of the viewer.
The classical composition of the work intensifies the decontextualisation of the elements in the scene (the curtain and the confessional) and their recomposition in the image. This aesthetic and conceptual redefinition can seemingly be assimilated with the surrealist artistic process. It is an act of communication which is original in terms of the understanding of the idea and its visible, concrete creation.

Pagano used Google Street View, which enables users to visit all the roads of the cities and the countries in the whole world virtually. In Google Street View, he went along Via Emilia, and stopped off in Borgo Panigale and Anzola. On the roof of the reception of Fabbri’s headquarters in Via Emilia Ponente is a gigantic model of the historical white and blue jar, an iconic symbol of the company.
On the grass in front of the Fabbri factory in Anzola dell’Emilia, between a hedgerow and some trees, we can see another huge version of the Fabbri jar. Pagano went to these places and used a large-scale camera to capture the front and back of the iconic “sculpture”, taking the pictures from above. Pagano used various different techniques, including information technology, analogical photography and UV printing. He did not make use of the mechanical nature of virtual images, instead using UV printing to superimpose the blue pattern of the Amarena Fabbri jar on top of the black and white photographs.
The juxtaposition of the four photographs creates a complex photographic form. The graphic intertwinement transforms the landscape into a conceptual image which highlights the link between the place of production and the iconic familiarity of the product.

Pezzani continues his research into the ability of photography to restore what is not “visible”, namely the real forms which the human eye is not able to process into definitive images. He interprets the results of his studies in a glamorous manner, which, as the critics have pointed out, seems intertwined with the elegant evanescence of the world of advertising.
Aequilibrium is a still life which not only represents an object but also symbolises lightness and balance. The ladle, with a red knob on the end of it, like a cherry, is perfectly balanced, like a weighing scale, on the hemispherical lid of the jar. This composition represents the history of Amarena Fabbri in a nutshell. Pezzani is familiar with Chinese art and the decorative China patterns which were developed in the province of Jiangxi, and which became widespread in Italy during the 16th century, initially in the area under the influence of the Medici dynasty. The historical blue patterns on a white background in Aequilibriumcan be interpreted in subtle ways André Chastel wondered what the links were between late fifteenth-century grotesque art and Calder’s mobiles or the semiotic universe of Steinberg. One of the fascinating stages of this journey is the famous Jugglers’ Hall in the Castle of Torrechiara which Pezzani knows well. The jugglers, balancing on four lions, perform complicated tricks using hoops. The spoon is perfectly balanced on the lid, and the red knob on the end of the ladle balances perfectly with the white and blue of the jar.

Oppedisano visited and photographed the factory in Bologna, creating an interpretation which is both abstract yet also recognisable as the Amarena Fabbri production and packaging line. He captured graphic images with the idea of layering different exposures, using a technique which he developed while at university, using RGB filters to obtain “impressionist” photographs. [RGB = Red Green Blue, the base colours used by monitors to visualise images]. Joe’s aim is to go beyond the simple representation of reality in order to capture the synthesis of multiple moments of everyday experience and the complexity of our perception of reality.
Straz Fabbri forms part of the Strazseries (Stratificazione del tempo e dello spazio = Layering of time and space) which the artist has been working on since the beginning of the new millennium, and which stems from research conducted during the 1990s. The artist uses a particular technique, modifying his camera to make the different frames in a roll of film merge into each other. The fusion between one negative and another, created in real time, creates a new vision due to the decomposition of the whole itself.
The artist juxtaposes the sequences, expanding and fragmenting the unity of the photographed space with the idea of breaking the usual view of the shot, and achieving optical fragmentation. Joe creates an imaginary space, which is similar but also different to the real thing. The metamorphosis of space and the distortions of the bigger picture create movement at the same time as disorientation, like the images formed by the multiple reflections of a kaleidoscope or the fantastic worlds of Escher. The experiment is a way of creating new styles and visions, and an attempt to represent interior emotion. This reflects the relationship between photography and Amarena Fabbri, at the heart of the image.

Die Liebe 2018 is an investigation of memory and a reflection on different styles throughout the history of art. It is a conceptual piece which overturns normal perspective. The artist develops the slowness of taking a photograph, enabling the viewer’s gaze to settle. She mixes creative styles and connects the complexity of contemporary art to the varied universe of the history of art.
In Brigitte’s work, the colour red does not clash with black and white, but instead absorbs them. Rubedo, a Latin word meaning redness, was one of the phases of the ancient practice of alchemy, and together with white, formed a pair of opposites, the union of which became known as the so-called “alchemical marriage”. This union is expressed in Die Liebe 2018 in a creative way, using a style which is both solemn and minimalist. The amarenas, red within the red, are two forms which come to the surface and join together.
Brigitte’s conceptual elaboration is an intense, expressive process into the material nature of the image. She is inspired by the flaming cloaks worn by van Eyck’s Madonnas, the red drapery in the background of Caravaggio’s Judith and Holofernes, and the fear of black swallowing up red in Rothko’s Four Darks in Red. However, her image also reflects the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity movement,with a polished objectivity, without any trickery but still just as strongly emotional. Brigitte herself admits to drawing on the depth of the transformed material surface of Burri’s Grande Rosso P. n. 18 (1964) and Rosso Plastica (1961), which resurfaces in the semiotic layering of Die Liebe 2018. However she is also inspired by the enlarged minimalism of Domenico Gnoli, which can be seen in the out-of-scale nature of the photographed object. The amarena has a double meaning: a union of the recollection of the subject and memories of childhood, as well as the sweetness of a fruit that like all our favourite meetings, contains the word “amore”, or love.

Mazzali’s work is a triptych, made up of three works, Red, Black and White, and displayed in this order. “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” - the title is a direct instruction for the viewer and shows the direction in which the artist is moving. The superimposition of the images creates unpredictable results and makes the viewer feel confused. The artist works on two levels, superimposing a physical space and a dreamlike space. The image is obtained using double exposure, with an image taken in the studio, and then taken again outside. Red, Black and White are the colours of the ampoules which depict the three main phases of the “Great Work”, the alchemical process of developing and transforming the material, aimed at creating the Philosopher’s Stone.
Mazzali’s work lingers on the transformation of elements which are still undivided, before being merged together. In the Red frame, a detailed shot of an amarena is superimposed over an image of the portico of San Luca. The White frame, with a detailed image of the Fabbri jar, reflects Bologna’s Two Towers.
Lastly, in the Black frame, the statue of Neptune is reflected in the amarenas floating in their sweet syrup. If we look closer we can see the amarenas, representing a dreamlike space, while from a distance we first catch sight of the physical monuments of the city. The work combines the tradition of a product which lives happily in our memory, and Bologna, a physical space where Fabbri’s production first began, and a city which the company still has close ties to.

Vaseros Fabbri by Mataro da Vergato is a reflection on the body as a subject and an artistic style. The poses of the male and female figures design the blue and white decorations, typical of Faenza, which can be found on the Fabbri jar. The spectacular physical exercises of the acrobatic performers and the choreographic positions of the ballerina from La Scala, stylised in the graphic architecture of the bodies, are converted into decorative patterns. The choreographic theatricality of the poses is a skill that the artist learned during his past as a ballet dancer and theatre actor.
In Vaseros Fabbri not only is the identity of the subject lost, but also the relationship between the figures and the background, as Gestalt teaches, tricks our eyes. This is a trompe l’oeil work, or more precisely a trompe-l’esprit, with this intentionally sought-after effect. Mataro starts with a digital photograph which he then modifies using a computer. His digital painting work began at the beginning of the 1990s, much ahead of its time, and aims to represent reality by means of a completely contemporary technical and creative process.
The works are created using different bases, and in our case it could be a large light box, although they all share an ambiguous fluctuation between what is visible and what is invisible. Vaseros Fabbri is the title of this work, supporting this interpretation, and it opens a gap in the mirror, which Alice was able to go through. If we look carefully we not only notice the bodies which make up the decorative pattern, but the material nature of the pleasure of tasting Fabbri’s mouth-watering fruit.

The work is an abstract construction defined by the sought-after fortuity which is characteristic of the artist’s works. Fashion imagery mediates the lesson of the historical avant-garde, the drama of futuristic objects, surrealist decontextualisation and the alienating effect of magical realism. In “Amare Amarene Amare”Gemelli concentrates an organised visual narrative into a single image.
The creative process involves drawing up a project, the search for objects, their assembly and the creation of a scene. The composition comes from an idea - the object transforms itself, changing its original function. The large Fabbri jar itself becomes a key figure of the work. Gemelli creates a set using recycled material. He puts together a little statue which he found in a market with a staircase he had previously used in a photo shoot for “Elle Decor Italia”. The artist reconstructs a room with great attention to detail, showing his skill as an interior designer inspired by the imaginative expressiveness of Gio Ponti. The composition and the angle at which the photograph is taken reinterpret the materials as part of a poetic transformation. The changes made during the post-production phase add harmony to the work, highlighting its dreamlike atmosphere, full of suspense. The lifeless statue looks like a female figure focusing on looking into a jar of wishes. The photograph is just the final moment of a long and complex creative process. It captures the situation in a moment just before something happens. The gaze of the artist and the viewer bears witness to the relationship between the artist and the subject.

Giovanni Gastel uses the field of fashion for creative exercises which have their roots in other fields. He mixes styles and imagery in a peculiar combination of genres. Fabbrifashion is a persuasive example of the creative contamination which includes the work of the author himself, which he refers to with a refined and elegantly ironic style. Gastel uses the adjective “elegant” to describe his perspective. Elegance, it should be noted, is intended as a vision of the world, and as a moral rather than aesthetic value.
The artist interprets the iconography of metamorphosis, represented by art, from the Renaissance to Contemporary art. The metamorphoses of Savinio, the unusual combinations of Cecil Beaton, the doubling of images by Erwin Blumenfeld, and the imagery of Irving Penn inspire Gastel, who responds with balanced composition and expressive imagery. He constructs a parallel world of pure imagination and provides a symbolic interpretation of both the story of fashion and the company’s icon, the Amarena Fabbri. On the other hand, fashion itself is a system of signs and relationships. The spontaneity of the young model personifies a product that is always young. It is a poetic staged set. Fashion is made to be photographed, and later recreated and revisited in post-production. This new attribution of meaning focuses on the creative use of the artist’s archive and amplifies the opportunity offered by fashion to be interpreted in a thousand different ways, and with a thousand different identities.

Franco Fontana’s aesthetic research focuses on the abstract expression of architecture, as well as the use of colour and patterns. In Fabbri 2018 the artist creates an interpretation of the urban landscape, focusing on the paradigmatic meaning of an architectonic design of intense formal value. The place (a detail of the seventeenth-century façade of the New Cathedral of Brescia) is not as important as the ability to appreciate the structural and formal expression of a classical motif. Fontana follows the rules of composition, but still manages to reveal the enigmatic nature of the image, namely the idea of a historical Italian provincial city concurring with the “classical nature” of a product which forms part of our memory. In the proportional principles of the extremely high Corinthian columns, his gaze has managed to capture a perfectly balanced backdrop with the pattern of a Fabbri jar.
In the urban scene, Fontana sees the photographs he wants to take, and detects a symbolic correspondence in the arrangement of spaces, and the organisation and balance of elements. Before even taking the photograph, he determines the ideal angle for the pedestal on which the very high Corinthian columns are placed, and realises that it is the ideal backdrop for the Fabbri jar.
It is as classical as the proportions of the columns, as a product which forms part of our memories just as we remember a monument itself. In this fragment of an urban landscape, space - the columns, the shape of the jar, and the roundness of the fruit - is the key element. The arrangement of colour is also important, with the Botticino marble that still preserves its rare colourful veins, forming a monochromatic backdrop. In the foreground the shiny blue decorations of the Fabbri jar and the bright red of the succulent fruits are colours used to aid the spatial organisation of the work.

The characteristic elements of the Fabbri iconography become scenic objects here, through a process of decomposition and simplification of forms, which acquire volume and a three-dimensional nature. A ballerina is the protagonist of the piece, impersonating the sinuosity and sensory explosion of the Amarena Fabbri. Narrative photography, from the true fiction of Gregory Crewdson to Jeff Wall’s compositions involving light and atmosphere, is the focal point of the artist’s research.
Vincenza’s staged photography is a complex and methodical process. She starts by imagining a scene, and a story that can be interpreted in a series of photographs. She thinks about how to construct the composition, she studies the light, and then chooses the figures and their clothes. Her photographs look like stills from a film, and seem to form part of a much bigger story, although they can also be viewed on their own because the traces of the narrative provide cues, enabling the observer to construct their own story. For this piece, the artist designed a distinct and complex set. It includes part of the pattern of the Fabbri jar, which represents the brand itself in the collective imagination.
Her Mise-en-scène is a formal operation of deconstruction and recontextualisation of the graphic elements of the jar. She breaks up the blue patterns into geometric forms, within a geometric white space. A ballerina dressed in red plays the role of the Amarena Fabbri. It is a metaphorical lure, in which the art of dance represents another art, the confectionery art of Fabbri. Is this staged set a real or constructed space? It’s up to the viewer to decide.

In the Nursery Fabbri the upside-down tree, placed in an imaginary location, grows in a dimension where there is no space or time. “It gets its nutrition from the sky”, explains the artist, “and its roots subside into the Platonic realm and draw their lifeblood directly from the world of ideas. These ideas are unchanging, perfect and achieved only through great wisdom”.
The nursery is a theatrical backdrop with two open sides, built in a studio, which features a cherry tree branch. It is the first time that Canini has used a theatrical backdrop to create an image, thus exploring all the illusory potential of photography. The interaction of the two-dimensional space of the image, and the three-dimensional space which precedes the photograph, make it a pleasure to look at. We can think of the three-dimensional models of Thomas Demand, but Canini’s work is full of imagination, rather than a detailed scale reproduction. It also recalls the images by James Casebere, the creator of complex tableau paintings, but Silvio’s approach is playful, and leads us into a surreal and ironic context.
The photographer’s talent is based on his ability to hint at a story, perhaps a fairytale, which does not exist outside the set he created in the studio. On the other hand, any photograph is always constructed in some way (whether it is expected, provoked or posed). Canini starts with an idea and objectifies his intentions through his clever use of the medium, constructing the illusion of a glance into a fairytale world.

Camellini focuses on the workplace, although the absent human figures can be sensed in the “syrup production line”. The photograph was taken at the Fabbri factory in Anzola dell’Emilia but could just as well be part of an industrial photography report, or more specifically a photo shoot of the manufacturing processes and locations. In particular, it brings to mind reports about cargo ships which are always on the move.
The photographer documents life on board, the organisation of areas and the arrangement of the cabins. Here too, human figures are not shown, although there are traces of human presence. On the other hand, photo reporting is Camellini’s favourite style, as can be seen from the choice of black and white, although it is not used exclusively. This work shows the production process and a presentation of industry, the history of which can be traced back a long way, from Albert Renger-Patzsch to MargaretBourke-White, from Ugo Mulas to Harry Gruyaert, to Edward Burtynsky. With this image Camellini puts the manufacture of an iconic product into context. The title itself is a play on words which recalls the production chain.
The choice of the motion blur technique and the out-of-focus image are usually seen as a mistake that needs to be corrected. Here, however, they give us an idea of machines operating, of selective focus on the idea of movement, as a metaphor for the dynamic relationship between product and design.
The artist brings together the past and present, capturing the cyclical nature of production in the photo, as a symbol of seriality and uniqueness. It recalls the serial nature of repetitive effort, which is an important, yet invisible element, and the unique quality of the aesthetic and attractive value of the shape of the product.

The artist used the latest iPhone to capture this image, which she then printed using the ancient photographic printing process known as cyanotype, characterised by its typical blue colour.
This photographic process highlights the graphic effect of the composition, while recalling the prints published in 1843 by Anna Atkins. The techniques and timing of the production of images using phone cameras have led to great changes in the distribution and consumption of images. Bertazza uses the latest modern technology but escapes from the system of connectivity and contradicts the fluid nature of the conversational image, an expression coined by André Gunthert. She explores the history of the medium by advocating the creation of a bridge between past and present. The image shows a girl as she is jumping, while holding an Amarena Fabbri jar in her hand. The pose, evoking the boldness of Baroque and the illusionistic perspective technique of “sotto in su” (from below to above), takes place in an imaginary, timeless location. The jump, explains Bertazza, represents a symbolic yet sturdy bridge between the past and the future, which is precisely what enables the company to achieve constant innovation, without losing track of its values and origins. The female figure, whose identity remains hidden, highlights the importance of women in the company’s history, from the creator of the famous recipe for “marena con frutto”, Rachele Buriani, to the prevalence of women in the production process. The fundamental theme throughout the creations of Bertazza, who mainly uses archive material that she reworks in a creative manner, is a personal reflection on the theme of memory, which can also be seen in this piece.

A man lying under a tree is joyfully contemplating the prospect of tasting an Amarena, with a large Fabbri jar beside him. The man is the artist’s grandfather, and is depicted in an open-air landscape, a crystalline version of the theme of déjeuner sur l’herbe. However, this is a real landscape, in the countryside near San Cataldo in Sicily, and the leafy pistachio tree possesses the basic monumental nature of Gustave Courbet’s The Oak of Flagey.
The man is a strong presence, restoring the physical aspect of the human figure, thus creating a distinct contrast with the ideal commercial image. His face is sweet, his eyes are half-closed and his ravenous mouth is captured in the moment just before he tastes the succulent fruit. The photograph introduces a link between the location and the iconic Fabbri jar, brought together in this recollection of a moment suspended in time. The memory of his hometown of Caltanissetta is linked to his memories of childhood, and combined in a single image.
The iconic nature of the Fabbri jar makes it far more than a mere container, but rather a fanciful vessel for holding fragments of memory. It belongs to the everyday life of each one of us, and forms part of the domestic landscape of our memories. Like Proust’s madeleines, the iconic jar brings back flavours and scents of the past to the artist. The clear, bright blue sky also evokes the white and blue decorations of the ceramic jar. The photographer is an admirer of the works of Ferdinando Scianna and Letizia Battaglia, two very different artists who both tell the story of Sicily from a new perspective, both ironic and playful, interpreting the light and colours of the landscape with the language of memory.