Sunday, April 06, 2014

Venice: Le Stanze del Vetro – I Santillana exhibition



Venice: Le Stanze del Vetro – I Santillana exhibition. The superb exhibition, I Santillana, at Le Stanze del Vetro, until August 3, traces the double trajectory of artists Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana, brother and sister who are direct descendants of the legendary Venini dynasty.  The siblings live and work in Venice where both have been developing, since the end of the 1980s, a body of work, which has come to achieve international recognition.
Above. Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana are reflected in Alessandro’s wall sculpture Senza Titolo (MUDAC), 2011 – hand-blown and mirrored glass on plywood with silver leaf.
 Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro
I Santillana. The exhibition brings together approximately 170 works including sculptures, artworks and glassware selected from a period of more than two years of meetings and conversations between Martin Bethenod and the siblings. The works on display investigate the diverse yet intertwined dialectic of the two artists, each following an autonomous artistic path but both relying on a common family heritage and biography.
Above.  Installation view room 5 in the foreground sculptures by Laura de Santillana and on the wall Alessandro Diaz de Santillana’s wall works.

 
Laura de Santillana – Senza Titolo (cristallo MoG) – 2009
Hand-blown and shaped glass with metal base



I Santillana – Press conference. Martin Bethenod, CEO of the Francois Pinault Foundation, Laura de Santillana, P. R. Elena Casadoro, Secretary General of the Giorgio Cini Foundation Pasquale Gagliardi and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana.

 Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro

 
I Santillana.  The exhibition is organized around a central axis representing their shared memory. The galleries of Le Stanze del Vetro have been adapted in order to enable a comparison and an ongoing dialogue between the works of the two artists. The central corridor named La Rue serves as a meeting point between the worlds of Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana and creates a cross-play of connections and references, but also of disagreements, though never forced nor far-fetched but rather revealing of the formal similarities, the peculiarities and differences between the artistic works and creative processes of Laura and Alessandro.
Above. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - Installation view of Room 7. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - S5 – 2013. Hand-blown glass and slumped glass.  Patina. Marine plywood and black lacquer.

 
 Marie-Rose Kahane, Chairman of Pentagram Stiftung and Pasquale Gagliardi, Secretary General of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.





I Santillana – La Rue. Laura de Santillana – Mon Malheur, 2009. Cast glass with metallic textile. Mon Bonheur, 1998. Jasmin garland in plexi box.

 
I Santillana. Laura de Santillana places Grey CU, 2005, hand-blown and shaped glass on the table.


I Santillana – La Rue. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana – C.DI.S.XIII, 1993. Hand-blown and ground glass.


I Santillana – La Rue.  A portrait of Laura and Alessandro’s mother by Richard MeitnerAnna Venini, 2004. Hand-blown glass, flat glass, enamels, wood.

 
Photograph by Fabio Zonta courtesy Le Stanze del Vetro




I Santillana. Alessandro Diaz de Santillana - Installation view of Room 6. HG and HGS, 2011 series. In the center, Senza Titolo, 1996. Hand-blown and mirrored glass. Below - HGS 5, 2011. Hand-blown, slumped and mirrored glass on plywood.


 
Neo director of the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Institute of Art History Luca Massimo Barbero and member of the Scientific Committee for the I Santillana exhibition has fun with the president of The Venice International Foundation Franca Coin.