«Quatre étages de conversation» was displayed on the front cover of the catalogue of the Arman's 1994 show in Faenza (IT). Specifically commissioned by Franco and Roberta Calarota from Galleria d'Arte Maggiore, the exhibition was a challenge to Arman to use a humble material to forge his trademark accumulations: ceramic. Clay is the symbol itself of creation, the biblical material from which everything is generated. Teapots, Arabic Ceramique, old mail boxes, small cups and sewing machines – all rigorously made out of ceramics – are the everyday objects that Arman chosed to be part of this new adventure: those things look anonymous in their monochromatic industrial forms, but yet they carry a long inheritance that this artist has reinterpreted with his characteristic humor and genius. The result is amazing: impratical skeletons, framed teapots become inoperative, turning the tide we may have of them, reversing familiar situations. In the displayed work, Quatre étages de conversation, four shelves of teapots divided into two half are exposed to the audience just like they would be exposed in one's home, brilliant, shiny, but, this time, useless. Here, the plein becomes the vide, and vice-versa, the ordinary becomes marvel and surprise. Galleria d'Arte Maggiore detains the exclusive right on all ceramic works by Arman.
