Glasstress 2015 Gotika (1)

For the last four Venice Biennales we have made a point of visiting Glasstress, the exhibitions initiated by Adriano Berengo, with the purpose of consecrating "glass as a noble material, one of the most innovative in contemporary art," as Berengo states in the introduction to the exhibition brochure. Each exhibition focuses on artists not usually associated with glass, and often the artists are invited to make new objects using the facilities of Murano glass studios.

This Glasstress was possibly the best, and was also one of the very best things we saw in conjunction with the Biennale. The show is in two parts, one at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in the Palazzo Franchetti, very near the Accademia Bridge on the San Marco side, and the other at the Fondazione Berengo on Murano.

Istituto staircase with Penny Byrne, Hurt Locker, 2015, at right

In this instance I would recommend the Istituto half much more enthusiastically than the Murano one, unless you really want to see the camel (Koen van Mechelen has participated in all the Glasstress exhibitions, with his ecologically based installations and objects, this time expanding from chickens to diversity in plants and animals.). Other times we have found the Murano section particularly engaging.

The Gothic theme was enhanced by loans of Gothic and neo-Gothic objects, most of them in glass, rock crystal and gold, from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, precious objects displayed in cases along the walls, but without identifying labels, as far as I could tell.

Glass and metal objects from the Hermitage, Glasstress

 I was drawn, and still am drawn, but a section of the introductory label, where curator Dimitri Ozerkov compares the "magic rituals" of contemporary daily routines - checking email, charging devices, deleting spam, online chatting, instagraming, tweeting, gaming and reading news online - to the laborious tasks of medieval monks copying manuscripts. He suggests that we see the internet as comparable to a medieval amulet to ward off evil. And with that he celebrates the craft involved in creating objects for this exhibition.

Glasstress has always involved contemporary artists not usually know for their work in glass. This year a few of those I know best are Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jaume Plensa, Petah Coyne, Qiu Zhijie, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Bernar Venet, Joana Vasconcelos, Mimmo Paladino, and Zhang Huan. But those by artists I did not know were at least equally engaging.

Although very few people read my blog, I find writing it a great learning opportunity. The Glasstress exhibition was fascinating in and of itself, but in order to write about the objects, I do a certain amount of research and am amazed at what I find about the artists whose work interests me, but who are unfamiliar. It's a great learning opportunity, and I try to share it through images and links. These artists are amazing.

"Gothic" suggests stained glass, and several works capitalized on that idea. At first I found Belgian artist Wim Delvoye's stained glass images of the muses Melpomene and Calliope, 2001/2, merely interesting. Then I looked closer and saw the x-ray images that make up the two figures, combining multiple body parts, chains, rings, keys and other elements. Calliope, on the right, is multiply bound, so that the windows call to mind political issues rather than religious contemplation. And I learned that Delvoye specializes in disturbing, challenging art.

Wim Delvoye, Melpomene, 2001/2, detail

 
In a similar vein, the lovely classical-looking chandelier by Chinese artist Song Dong turns out to be a bit less harmless. Titled Glass Big Brother, 2015, it is composed of glass surveillance cameras.

Song Dong, Glass Big Brother, 2015

American Bart Dorsa  (He has lived in Moscow for several years and his grandfather invented Eggo waffles.) showed fragmented hollow white sculptures of partial bodies in a totally darkened space. While I was not particularly engaged by his exhibition of photogaphs of a young woman named Katya as a collateral event of the 2013 Biennale, these glass sculptures were more evocative. In the label he associates them with a sculpture of Joan of Arc he discovered in Notre Dame in Paris.

Bart Dorsa, Relic Glass #1 and #2, detail

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