As an art of both space and time, video succeeds in telling us something interesting only when the artist can affect our perception of these dimensions in fresh, even disruptive ways. Daniele Puppi’s videos, with their strongly disorienting spatial effects, are always disruptive—and they achieve this without recourse to advanced technology. His most recent solo exhibition was a confirmation of the hopes that many in Italy are placing on this young artist.

Puppi installed his video Fatica no. 14 (Effort no. 14), 2001, in the smaller of the gallery’s two rooms, but the subject of the work was the

The gallery seemed to be piled with garbage—dead car batteries, torm boxes, kitschy animal statuettes. and feces—with snails crawling all over. It was only when you realized that what seem to be assemblages of found objects are actually ceramic sculptures that the work revealed itself as a tour de force of a medium pushed in unexpected directions. By playfully describing themselves as a ceramics production company operating in an art context, Bertozzi & Casoni locate their work in the gray zones between artwork and product, fine art and craft, exhibition and decoration. It is entirely