Halcyon Days

Sperone Westwater is pleased to present Halcyon Days, an exhibition featuring photographs by Peter Schlesinger and ceramics by Bertozzi & Casoni.

Peter Schlesinger’s images function as both personal diary and cultural document, recording interiors, destinations, and moments shared with creative luminaries from Schlesinger’s artistic circle. His lens reveals fleeting social encounters, domestic rituals, spaces just vacated, and the quiet afterglow of conversations, celebrations and long summer afternoons.

Alongside Schlesinger's photographs are ceramics by Bertozzi & Casoni which fuse hyperrealism with surreal humor. Luxury handbags are left ajar, revealing the secret lives of their unseen owners: sunglasses, cigarettes, pill bottles, a miniature Brancusi bust. Nearby, trays littered with eggshells, flatware, half-eaten chocolates and empty espresso cups evoke the aftermath of indulgence and revelry.

Born in Los Angeles in 1948, Peter Schlesinger lives and works between Bellport, NY and New York City. After studying painting at the University of California, Los Angeles, he went on to London’s Slade School of Art in the late 1960s and early 1970s and began making sculpture in New York in the mid-1980s. Schlesinger’s work has been exhibited at Gallery Met, New York, NY; Flag Art Foundation, New York; the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; David Lewis Gallery, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; The Clocktower, New York; Tate Liverpool, UK; and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work isin collectionsincluding the Arts Council Collection, London; the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, ME; Manchester Art Gallery, UK; the Parrish Art Museum; and the UBS Art Collection, New York.

Giampaolo Bertozzi (born in Borgo Tossignano in 1957), and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni (born in Lugo di Romagna in 1961, died in Imola in 2023), met as students at the Gaetano Ballardini Ceramic Art Institute in Faenza, Italy. Their work was featured in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and 2011. Solo museum exhibitions include a survey at Castello Sforzesco and Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza (2008-09), a solo show at Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2011-12); and “Bertozzi & Casoni: Timeless” at the Museum Beelden aan Zee, Den Haag, The Netherlands (2013). Recent solo museum exhibitions include MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2015-16); Palazzo Poggi, Bologna (2017); Museo MARCA, Catanzaro (2019); Museo Morandi, Bologna (2019-20); and Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (2022). In 2023-24, the City of Imola and Imola Museums organized “Bertozzi & Casoni: Tranche de vie,” a multi-institution survey at Palazzo Tozzoni, Museo San Domenico and Rocca Sforzesca. In 2017, Museo Bertozzi & Casoni, a permanent exhibition space devoted to their work, opened at the Cavallerizza Ducale in Sassuolo, Italy. Bertozzi currently lives and works in Imola. They have had solo exhibitions at Sperone Westwater in 2005, 2015 and 2021