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Venice is in the grip of art fever with the 53rd La Biennale di Venezia underway. Glass Stress, an official exhibition of the 53rd Venice Biennale that celebrates the use of glass in contemporary art, is being held in the historic Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti from June 6 – November 22, 2009. The exhibition is presented by Venice Projects, an organisation dedicated to presenting the work of internationally recognised artists who work with glass.

Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti
Glass Stress features both specially commissioned new work and selected pieces by over thirty-five modern and contemporary artists, many of whom are working with glass for the first time. The exhibition explores each artist’s unique approach to working with the glass, the technical limits inherent in the material, and the synthesis between the artist’s ideas and the glass master’s skills. The exhibition is organised by Murano-based art impresario Adriano Berengo and curated by Laura Mattioli Rossi and Rosa Barovier Mentasti.

Tony Cragg

Glass Stress represents Berengo’s dream of examining the expressive possibilities of glass by presenting a global survey and critical look at its use by modern and contemporary artists. The exhibition will showcase original and innovative work by artists, who traditionally work in other media, such as, Luciano Fabro, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Kosuth and Tony Cragg. These artists were and are fascinated by the formal and conceptual possibilities of the material. In addition, there will be work by glass artists such as Lino Tagliapietra, who have taken the forms and technical traditions of Murano glass production to new and exciting extremes. Dan Graham, who uses glass to create contemporary environments and installations, is also part of this important and historical presentation.

Flaubert Letters II by Barbara Bloom

Cindrella Revealed by Soyeon Cho
The exhibition represents a link between the Venetian fine art glass movement of 1950s, Adriano Berengo’s Venice Projects and the 2009 Venice Biennale. As a young man, growing up in Venice, Berengo was aware that Peggy Guggenheim was fascinated by the artistic possibilities of glass – she felt that Venetian glass was too important to be used only for decorative purposes. Guggenheim encouraged Picasso, Braque, Chagall and Max Ernst to experiment with glass by working with Egidio Costantini (“Fucina Degli Angeli” – The Forge of Angels). He was the master who could help them express their artistic ideas with glass. Following in Costantini’s footsteps, Berengo started Venice Projects in the 1980s for the purpose of helping artists, many of whom have never worked with glass, discover the artistic possibilities of the material. Since then, he has invited over 140 international artists to collaborate with the glass masters at Berengo Studio - many of these artists are in the exhibition.

Bamboo by Pino Castagna

The Accident by Koen Vanmechelen
Participating artists include Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Barbara Bloom, Louise Bourgeois, Sergio Bovenga, Lawrence Carroll, Cèsar, Soyeon Cho, Tony Cragg, Jan Fabre, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Francesco Gennari, Dan Graham, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Seul Hye Rim Lee, Mimmo Jodice, Marya Kazoun, Joseph Kosuth, Raimund Kummer, Rita McBride, ORLAN, Jean Michel Othoniel, Luca Pancrazzi, Anne Peabody, Anton Pevsner, Jauma Plensa, Man Ray, Silvano Rubino, Jana Sterbak, Lino Tagliapietra, Koen Vanmechelen and Kimiko Yoshida.

The exhibition is sponsored by The Mjellby Konstmuseum of Halmstad, Sweden in collaboration with Susan Scherman of Susan Scherman Fine Arts, San Francisco.