From 3 June to 27 November 2022, at the same time as the 59th Venice Biennale, the seventh edition of Glasstress, the review, promoted by Berengo Foundation, which invites international names of contemporary art to deal with glass processing.
The two-year initiative bears the title State of Mind, and is hosted at the Berengo Art Space Foundation in Murano, a furnace that was abandoned in 1965 and transformed into an exhibition space.
The eternal relevance of glass
The Glasstress collective offers a path that develops within the facets of the best contemporary art, confronting one ancient technique like glass blowing.
The artists' productions have shown how glass is capable of emancipating itself from stereotypes and of communicating with the viewer through a modern and usable language.
The premises of the organizer
The words of Adriano Berengo, President of Berengo Studio and of the Berengo Foundation, clearly highlight the entity and objectives of Glasstress: "Glass has always had a special meaning for Murano and, on the occasion ofUnited Nations Year of Glass, we are immensely proud to point out how the unlimited creative abilities of this great material continue to follow new unexplored paths ".
A comparison with transience
The central theme of Glasstress is the fragility, which distinguishes both the creative process and life itself. In fact, the exhibition opens with a meditation on death and extinction. The work of feminist artist Judy Chicago, titled “Mortality and extinction reliefs”, represents a candy pink tombstone, inviting viewers to contemplate their own destiny. Death is also in Jimmie Durham's animal skulls; and in Marya Kazoun's coffin filled with leaves.
An intertwining of destinies
Fragility as an existential condition also recurs in the chair made by Ryan Gander, where one can sit or hurt, and above all in the chandelier surrounded by bees by Laure Prouvost. The reference to the fate of Icarus acts as a call for consciences, as happens in a famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein, which links the fate of man to that of pollinating insects.
From fragility to creation
Finally, Glasstress represents an invitation to embrace one's fragility as an impulse to creativity. Because it is precisely the creative impulse, in its absolute value (from the Latin 'absolutus', free from constraints), that can generate that restorative energy, which is a cathartic synonym of rebirth and love.
All that remains is to discover all the works of the collective by visiting Glasstress until November 27th.
Sources: corrieredelveneto.corriere.it, artemagazine.it
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