FROM VENICE TO BOCA RATON
“There is every reason this year to have a world view,” says Irvin Lippman, the Boca Raton Museum of Art's Executive Director, as South Florida boldly presents the national premiere of ‘Glasstress 2021'.
34 of the world's leading contemporary artists were invited to breathe new life into the centuries-old art of glassmaking in Venice with their works now being presented in ‘Glasstress 2021'. “The exhibition is also a tribute to the resilience of Venice surviving the floods and continuing to make art through the pandemic.
"Three years in the making, and with 2020 being such a challenging year to coordinate an international exhibition of this size and scope, the effort serves as an important reassurance that art is an essential and enduring part of humanity,” states Irvin Lippman, Executive Director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, which is currently presenting the U.S. premiere of ‘Glasstress 21'. “This is also a tribute to the resilience of Venice surviving the floods and continuing to make art through the pandemic.”
34 of the world's leading contemporary artists including Ai Weiwei, Fred Wilson, Joyce J. Scott, Jimmie Durham, Ugo Rondinone, Fiona Banner, Vik Muniz, Monica Bonvicini, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Laure Prouvost, Renate Bertlmann, Thomas Schütte, Loris Gréaud, and Erwin Wurm, were all invited to breathe new life into the centuries-old art of glassmaking in Venice. All of the artists in this new, never-before-seen edition of ‘Glasstress' were commissioned to work alongside his master glass artisans at the Berengo Studio on the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.
Most of these artists have, during their careers, been invited to participate in the Venice Biennale. The ex-hibition runs through September 5, 2021 and also features online initiatives for virtual viewing.
Almost all of these works have never been seen elsewhere, and were handpicked by Kathleen Goncharov, the Museum's Senior Curator, who travelled to Italy in 2019.
Some of the pieces were created during the pandemic lockdowns, with artists collaborating remotely via Zoom with their glass artisan partners after initial on-site work at the studio in Venice.
“Unlike the past and the present, what comes next for our world presents itself as constant possibility, always transforming as we move forward in time,” says Adriano Berengo. the visionary behind Fondazione Berengo, Glasstress, and the glass factory Berengo Studio. “This concept of transformation has always held an affinity with glass, a medium which – as the name ‘Glasstress' suggests – exists in a state of constant tension. Life needs tension, it needs energy, and a vibrant exchange of ideas.”
Following in the footsteps of Egidio Costantini and Peggy Guggenheim, who introduced outstanding artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall to Murano glass, Berengo has been championing the innovative use of glass as a medium in contemporary art for 30 years by inviting more than 300 artists to work with the glass masters in Murano.
The Fondazione Berengo was founded in 2014 as a cultural institution consolidating and strengthening Berengo's mission of marrying the Muranese glass-making tradition with contemporary art. The Foundation seeks to achieve this goal through educational initiatives and an interdisciplinary programme of exhibitions and special projects in collaboration with internationally acclaimed artists, designers, and architects.
In 2016, it sponsored the first retrospective of the late Dame Zaha Hadid, and the following year it forged a partnership with the European Institute for Human Rights and Democracy to explore ways to use art to raise awareness of human rights issues.
“We have brought ‘Glasstress' to countries around the world for 10 years, seeking to expand and enliven international awareness of the variety and richness of contemporary artists using glass in their creative practices,” adds Berengo. “In the past, its place in the art world might have seemed uncertain. But now in this latest edition, the first after a global pandemic, one thing we know for certain: glass endures. Life is fragile, just as glass is fragile, yet in this fragility there is also strength.”
It is in this spirit of experimentation that 'Glasstress Boca Raton 2021' explores the limitless potential of glassblowing. “We realise how far we have come as we approach the 60th anniversary of the American studio glass movement that launched in 1962 through the efforts of Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino,” notes Lippman. “This presentation of 'Glasstress' is also a tribute to them.”
The mission of ‘Glasstress' is to restore the visibility and reputation of Murano glass, after decades of closures of ancient, centuries-old glass furnaces. Instead of creating decorative objects with glass, these artists were invited to create original works, many on a massive scale.
They collaborated with glass masters whose expertise has been developed over generations in Venice. Most of the artists have never worked with glass, so they united their artistic ideas with the technical expertise of their skilled collaborators, and the results are breathtaking.
The exhibition presents 34 new works that explore some of today's pressing subjects, including human rights, climate change, racial justice, gender issues and politics. The Boca Raton Museum of Art has dedicated more than 6,500 square feet of exhibition space to this collection.
The first installation visitors to the Museum will encounter is ‘Sala Longhi' by Fred Wilson, who created this series at Berengo Studio after the Venice Biennale exhibited his work focusing on the black residents of Venice from the Renaissance to the present. This installation features an ornate white chandelier with 29 glass panels that mirror 18th Century Venetian artist Pietro Longhi's
paintings. Instead of using canvases, Wilson shows the viewer only the whites of the eyes of his black subjects through cutouts in black reflective glass.
Artist Ai Weiwei's ‘Blossom Chandelier' is a large-scale installation bursting with unexpected shapes emanating from white glass flowers to surprise the eye: menacing handcuffs, twitter birds, and security cameras, amongst others.
This show also unveils the Museum's new acquisition for its collection, created in the Berengo Studio – ‘Glass Big Brother', a sculpture by Song Dong, one of contemporary Chinese art's leading figures. The large-scale installation is 11 feet long and reaches all the way to the floor. Thirty surveillance cameras are ensconced from top to bottom, looking around in all directions. “This chandelier sculpture by Song Dong with its glass-blown surveillance cameras, is both poetic and poignant,” says Lippman. “It was commissioned by the Museum to hang in our new Wolgin Education Center front windows that face pedestrians walking across Mizner Park.”
The installation ‘Rosemarie's Divorce', by Renate Bertlmann, unites aspects from ‘Rosemarie's Baby' (1983), her multi-part installation about the ambivalent relationship between mother and child, and ‘Discordo Ergo Sum', a field of knife-roses that she exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The monstrously enlarged glass pacifier is an image she has used since the mid-1970s referencing sexuality and motherhood. It is flanked by two knife-roses made of deep black glass.
‘DNA Has No Color' is a new statement from Nancy Burson that is a powerful work about the illegitimacy of racism. This is a continuation of the project that Zaha Hadid commissioned Burson to develop for the London Millennium Dome.
Burson is known for biology-related work, including her use of cutting-edge facial morphing technology for art that shows what individuals would look like as a different race.
‘The Pandemic Oculus' by Tim Tate explores the worlds of loss, memory, recovery, and hope. As an HIV-positive man, he lived through the worst of the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s and 1990s, and now through the current pandemic. In the Museum's exhibition catalogue, the artist states that ‘The Pandemic Oculus' also honours the many unsung heroes around the world: nurses, teachers, essential employees, grandparents caring for children so that parents can work, and so many more.
Tate is the Co-Founder of the Washington Glass Studio in Washington, DC. He is also the co-moderator, along with William Warmus, of the 21st Century Glass group on Facebook, which has shared and discussed over 10,000 images of sculptural glass from around the world.
Erwin Wurm's wry sense of humor permeates his most famous works and has served him well in creating a poignant cultural commentary throughout his career. Wurm produced a triptych in cold hard glass for this exhibition - smaller versions of the massive bronze sculpture of a hot water bottle with legs, ‘Big Mutter', that he created for the Venice Biennale in 2020.
Jimmie Durham's work features a series of eight giant cougar heads suspended on metal armatures. Caught in suspension as they gaze at one another, their collective roar remains frozen between them. The cougar is one of the most sacred animals in Cherokee mythology, and the influence of Native-American culture versus Western rationalism is clearly evident in the artist's work.
Durham is also known for his work during the civil rights movement and for being part of the American Indian Movement. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award at the 58th Venice Biennale.
Curator Goncharov describes Prune Nourry as no stranger to illness, her work always dealing with science and bioethics from a feminist perspective, a focus that has intensified since her breast cancer diagnosis in 2018. Nourry has created ‘River Woman' in borosilicate glass, a transparent skeletal sculpture based on an anatomical drawing of the human vascular system. While its form may be human, the arteries resemble rivers, streams and trees that suffer in their own way too, from human abuse rather than disease.
Ugo Rondinone represented his home country in the Swiss Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. In his piece for ‘Glasstress', the 12 glass horses cast in beautiful shades of blue all face different directions, creating delicate light games with their reflections and shadows in continuous motion. In the context of this installation, the reappearing motif of a horse (which has a long tradition in the history of art), evokes alienation and a subversive twist emblematic of Rondinone's works.
Entering its eighth decade this year, the Boca Raton Museum of Art encompasses a creative campus that includes the Museum in Mizner Park and the Art School.
As one of South Florida's cultural landmarks, the Museum has provided cultural and artistic service to the community, and to many visitors from around the world since it was founded by artists in 1950.