Koen Vanmechelen's fantastical creatures on display on the island of Murano

Fresh from their great success at the Uffizi Gallery with the exhibition Seduction, the thirty fantastic creatures created by Flemish artist Koen Vanmechelen with combinations of glass and Carrara marble are presented by Adriano Berengo on theisland of Murano.

Created in 2021 with the support of the masters of Berengo Studio for the glass part and Michelangelo Laboratories of Carrara for the marble part, the works will be hosted from Friday, April 8 until Sunday, May 15, 2022 inside the Berengo Art Space Foundation (Campiello della Pescheria 4) under the title Burning Falls. The exhibition is part of the In Città section of Homo Faber 2022, the major exhibition event dedicated to art crafts and high international craftsmanship organized by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship in partnership with the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Cologni Foundation for Artistic Crafts, the Japan Foundation and the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller.

The exhibition aligns with the spirit of Homo Faber, Crafting a more Human Future, the focus of which this year is The Living Treasures of Europe and Japan, and allows for the celebration of a unique material in this International Year of Glass. “If Burning Falls can break down the walls that divide us today, it will create a transparency in which we will recognize each other,” says Koen Vanmechelen. With Burning Falls also continues the artist’s Cosmopolitan Renaissance narrative, which sees the burning mouth of the furnace as its focal point. “Glass,” says the artist, “is the material of the future. It is both recyclable and moldable. And it invites connection and teamwork, blending creativity and craftsmanship. Working with glass is like working with water: the liquid becomes solid when the elements come together. Fire allows this transformation, and the state between solid and liquid is symbolized by a firebird, like an action generator, or a lava flow, leading to the image of Burning Falls.”

For the occasion, in addition to Medusa, the red tiger, serpentine chickens, horned iguanas and other fantastical animals seen in Florence, there will also be a number of never-before-exhibited pieces, including the interesting Formula Segreta chandeliers: two complex works that reflect on the origin, decay and regeneration of all created things, and are meant to be the artist’s tribute to the history of Murano glass. “The secret formula of these magnificent chandeliers is the chain of evolution,” the Belgian artist explains. “At the base of the evolutionary chain are crests, claws and eggs: primordial elements, a metaphor for an ancestral world in perpetual struggle for survival. The serpent slithers among them and reminds us of the decadence resulting from original sin and the final judgment, its inevitable consequence. Species evolved but were lost, in dissolution and self-destruction, from generation to generation. A new segment intervened to redirect evolutionary destiny: the virus. But, out of the potential destruction, a new life emerged, an egg from which a child was generated, blindfolded because it was still unaware.”

All the sculptures produced by Vanmechelen for this project skillfully juxtapose the tones of marble with the luster of glass, and are meant to reflect on the significance of certain key figures in classical mythology. It happens with Medusa, the gorgon who instead of hair had snakes whose venom could wake the dead: in giving her form Vanmechelen draws a clever parallel by noting how chicken eggs are used in modern medicine as the basis for vaccines and medicines. Her Medusa thus becomes a metaphor for humanity itself, imbued with the power to kill as well as the ability to bring new life. Similarly, the symbolism of snakes, transformed for the occasion into monstrous and deformed chickens, is also reinterpreted. The intent is to evoke in the viewer the symbolic value of the humble chicken, a subject that has always been dear to the artist because it exemplifies the potential for life and the ways in which human beings have been negligent with its unlimited potential.

The exhibition, curated by Studio Vanmechelen in collaboration with Fondazione Berengo, is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free admission.

Koen Vanmechelen's fantastical creatures on display on the island of Murano

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