Glasstress: White Light / White Heat
Contemporary artists and glass
Collateral Event of the 55th International Art
Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
http://www.glasstress.org

Ron Arad, Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Cornelia Parker, Conrad Shawcross, Joanna Vasconcelos, Miroslaw Balka, Cai Guo Quiang and others create their first glass works in Murano, co-curated by Adriano Berengo and James Putnam. In a unique collaboration between the Berengo Studio (Venice), Venice Projects (Venice), the London College of Fashion and the Wallace Collection (London).

Glasstress: White Light/White Heat presents the newly commissioned work of some of today’s most important contemporary artists, most of whom will be working in glass for the first time.
The exhibition builds on the success of two previous Venice Art Biennale Glasstress shows (2009, 2011), with some fifty artists invited to respond to the theme of light and heat, the components of fire, the fundamental elements involved in the formation of the universe and also the essence of glassblowing. Light is integral to our perception of glass, while heat is required to shape it.
The show includes some major and emerging contemporary artists including: Alice Anderson, Polly Apfelbaum, Ron Arad, Miroslaw Balka, Rina Banerjee, Fiona Banner, Loris Cecchini, Hussein Chalayan, Mat Collishaw, Tony Cragg, Tracey Emin, Jan Fabre, Paul Fryer, Stuart Haygarth, Shirazeh Houshiary, Shih Chieh Huang, John Isaacs, Michael Joo, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Hew Locke, Alastair Mackie, Kris Martin, Whitney McVeigh, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Cornelia Parker, Cai Guo Qiang, Thomas Schütte, Conrad Shawcross, Meekyoung Shin, Joana Vasconcelos, Mariko Mori, Joseph Kosuth, Jason Martin, Jaume Plensa, Koen Vanmechelen. Other artists involved reflect the influence of the London College of Fashion such as Lucy Orta, Charlotte Hodes, Boudicca and Helen Storey.

Adriano Berengo, President of Berengo Studio, is celebrating 20 years of working with artists this year. The studio was founded in Murano in 1989, with the first works created in collaboration with artists in 1993, inspired largely by Peggy Guggenheim’s fascination for the artistic possibilities of glass. Guggenheim encouraged modernist artists like Kokoschka, Picasso, Braque, Chagall and Max Ernst, to experiment with Venetian glass, feeling that it shouldn’t be relegated to the purely decorative. With the Glasstress shows he is offering a selection of contemporary artists the chance to explore this fascinating medium.

Professor Frances Corner, Pro Vice Chancellor, LCF, says “We wanted to create a collaboration with Berengo Studio and the Wallace Collection to help change perceptions about all of our disciplines – craftsmanship, glassmaking and fashion. Fashion is such a transformative medium: we all use it to change the way we look and express ourselves. The artists in our exhibition are transforming glass, ‘fashioning’ it into something that carries so much more meaning than the raw material. There is an exciting alchemy at work here.”

Glasstress: White Light / White Heat opened at the preview of the Venice Biennale on 31 May at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti on the Grand Canal and at the Berengo Centre for Contemporary Art and Glass accompanied by dynamic performances from Alice Anderson and Cai Guo Qiang. Ron Arad's work for the exhibition also has a performative and interactive element. Entitled 'Last Train', it is inspired, he says, by a late night train journey in which he witnessed a man using the large diamond ring on his hand to graffiti a train window. Arad has invited artists such as Anthony Gormley and David Shrigley to use a specially created iPad programme to manipulate a bejewelled hand that scratches their drawings into a large piece of plate glass. The finished works will be on display in the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti.

At the close of the Biennale, a selection of pieces from the exhibition will travel to the London College of Fashion’s Fashion Space Gallery and to the Wallace Collection, where the contemporary work will be in dialogue with their important Venetian glass collection. Adriano Berengo offered a prize for University of the Arts alumni to create a work in glass to be made at his studio and exhibited as part of Glasstress: White Light / White Heat.
A major publication will accompany Glasstress: White Light / White Heat, which will also be featured in the official Biennale catalogue.

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