#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards + Party Photos - Highlights

"...the artist’s talent, combined with her passion for nature, results in works of exceptional realism and exquisite grace. The refined lampworking technique reaches hyper-realistic levels in Lilla Tabasso’s hands, whilst still maintaining a profound emotional impact." 

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards

Premio Fondazione di Venezia

The Venice Glass Week's 2024 - Premio Fondazione di Venezia - was awarded to the exhibition Fior di Tabasso. Le stagioni al Florian, organized by Caffe Florian, Daniela Vedaldi Gaddo, and Caterina Tognon - curated by Stefano Stipitivich, featuring works by Lilla Tabasso, inspired by Caffe Florian's Room of Seasons, the show highlights her hyper-realistic compositions using traditional Venetian caffe objects. The Jury praised Tabasso's exceptional talent, blending a passion for nature with refined lampworking techniques to create emotionally impactful and exquisitely graceful works.

The Jury of the Premio Fondazione di Venezia, was composed of Jean Blanchaert - curator and member of the Curatorial Committee - Giovanna Palandri - Chancellor of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti and President of the festival’s Organising Committee - and Paola Marini - General Councillor of the Fondazione di Venezia.

The Winner - Premio Fondazione di Venezia

Lilla Tabasso 

"Every day, as has been the case for decades, the bar counter at Caffè Florian is decorated with fresh flowers. Well, I would very much love to replace them with Lilla Tabasso’s hyperrealistic creations as an innocent joke at the expense of Florian’s patrons as they visit for their nightly spritz. We all know that the idea for the Venice Art Biennale was born here, and for this reason, since the 1980s we have been turning a public venue, our coffee house, into an art gallery."  

Stefano Stipitivich  

Caffè Florian Art Director

Lilla Tabasso - Fior di Tabasso - Le Stagioni al Florian

For her solo show at Caffè Florian, Lilla Tabasso created glass compositions dedicated to the Room of Seasons painted by Cesare Rota around mid XIX century.

Lilla Tabasso - Fior di Tabasso - Le Stagioni al Florian

photograph courtesy - The Venice Glass Week

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards

Premio Fondazione di Venezia - Special Jury Prize

The Jury of the Premio Fondazione di Venezia also awarded an unprecedented Special Jury Prize to Dylan Katz‘s solo exhibition, 61. 5°N, curated by Costanza Longanesi Cattani, for the formal, aesthetic and technical research and energy invested in the realisation of this important project.

Balanced on a pedestal in the heart of Venice, what appears to be blocks of ice stand, unmelting in the heat. Uncanny Ice uses the power of art and the raw beauty of glass to spark an emotional response. Drawing upon both the similarities and stark differences between glass and ice, these pieces compel the viewer to reflect on the relationship between man and nature.

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - Convito di Vetro

 

A Special Recognition was awarded to - Convito di Vetro - the installation curated by Sung Moon Cho and organised by the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia with the sponsorship of Pentagram Stiftung: the exhibition is an example of curatorship becoming a work of art, accompanied by a valuable small scale catalogue.

Director of Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia Giulio Manieri Elia, curator Sung Moon Cho and Pentagram Stiftung's David Landau

The installation - Convito di Vetro -  The Glass Banquet - until November 3 - at the Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - curated by Sung Moon Cho. The intent is to showcase the aesthetic evolution and technological innovation of Murano glass, through the display of a banquet table set with a selection of wine, beverage, and liquor services, created in Murano from the 1920s to the present day thanks to the creativity of artists and designers.

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - Convito di Vetro

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - Convito di Vetro

Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia - Convito di Vetro

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Simone Crestani & Ioannis Michalou(di)S. - S.O.S-Save Our Sky 

Simone Crestani & Ioannis Michalou(di)S. - S.O.S-Save Our Sky exhibited at The Venice Glass Week HUB at Palazzo Loredan: the glass works created by Crestani to contain Michaliou(di)s’ clouds are witty sculptures reminiscent of those created by Fulvio Bianconi for the Commedia dell’arte. Also thanks to this work, we can intuit that glass is playing an increasingly important role in science and technology.

Ioannis Michalou(di)S. and Simone Crestani

photograph - Enrico Fiorese - courtesy The Venice Glass Week 

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Alexander Kirkeby - Ceremony

Special Recognition to the exhibition Ceremony by Alexander Kirkeby, exhibited at Casa YALI. The Jury was struck by the remarkable technical mastery of this young Danish artist, sees him projected towards a future as bright as his works.  In his first solo show in Venice - Ceremony - features intricate glass objects handcrafted by the artist in his Aarhus studio. Kirkeby’s works challenge traditional norms of proportion, scale, and balance, blending precise craftsmanship with the chaotic nature of glass. Archetypal forms merge traditional glass-making techniques with distorted aesthetics, resulting in functional, tactile, and contemporary pieces that shift from classic to deformed shapes.

Johanne Marie Jensen and Alexander Kirkeby

photographs Massimo Pistore - courtesy The Venice Glass Week

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Collective Exhibition Nature/AI - Palazzo Contarini Polignac

Special Recognitions to the collective exhibition Nature/Al at Palazzo Contarini Polignac: around the table, adorned with artistic glass centrepieces and in a Peter Greenaway-style atmosphere, figures from all over the glass world met for one significant evening in dialogue with each other: scholars, artists, curators, and enthusiasts.  The collective ephemeral exhibition conceived for a dinner table to be admired and enjoyed for one night alone. It is both a retrospective of those glass artists shown at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac until this year and a very natural unfolding. Nature - the theme of the dining table, is the common thread among the artists.

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Autonoma Residency Prize

Yue Wu - The Nine Dragons Plate

The young Chinese artist Yue Wu, who was participating in The Venice Glass Week HUB Under35 with the installation - The Nine Dragons Plate - was awarded the fifth edition of the Autonoma Residency Prize, which enables him to undertake an Artistic Residency at the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle - USA - in 2025. On behalf of Laguna~B, promoter of the Prize, Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda commented that the nine Dragons have been decorative motifs associated with emperors since antiquity. Often, the nine Dragons were embroidered in emperors’ robes, engraved in weapons and architecture. Yue Wu has succeeded in recreating this ancient and powerful scene on a crystal disc, The Nine Dragons Plate. The extraordinary translucent carving technique blurs the notion of time and takes us back through the centuries, and the beauty of this work leaves the viewer speechless.

#TheVeniceGlassWeek 2024 - Awards -  Special Recognitions

Fratelli Toso 170th | 1854 – 2024

Vetro inciso della Laguna

A special Recognition also went to Fratelli Toso 170th | 1854 – 2024 organised by Fratello Toso, for the quality of the works set in a highly atmospheric environment and the narration of the past through a contemporary lens.

A Special Recognition to the exhibition Vetro inciso della Laguna, organised by the Comitato Vetri di Laguna in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, for the diachronic journey through the history of glass engraving: a two-venue exhibition which allows us to observe different techniques and cold working processes from the eighteenth century to the present day.

#TheVeniceGlass Week 2024 - Party Photos

The Courtyard - Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello

In the monumental courtyards - lit in fiery red  - Palazzo Pisani - home to the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello - The Venice Glass Week's organising committee held it's annual party for the festivals participants, artists, partners and sponsors, celebrating the Art of Glass.

Luciano Gambaro, Giovanna Palandri, David Landau, Rosa Barovier Mentasti Camilla Purdon, Francesca Fungher and Elena Casadoro

The Micheluzzi

Elena, Massimo and Margherita

Sung Moon Cho, Maria Grazia Rosin and Sigrid de Montrond

Anna and Antonio Dei Rossi

Judi Harvest, Gilda Bojardi and Lillo Scaringi Raspagliesi 

Costanza Longanesi Cattani

Lilla Tabasso, Caterina Tognon, Anna Detheridge and Antonella Fontana

Leon Diaz de Santillana and Miriam Del Pino

Camilla Purdon, Michael and Ann Marie Procino and Fiorello

Marta Sala, Toto Bergamo Rossi and Elisabetta Rubin de Cervin

Sarah Rivoltella and Antonella Mazza

Alessandra Zoppi, Tristano de Robilant and Michela Cattai

Drinks

Select Aperitivo - The Original Venetian Spritz

Goodnight

 

Venice - #TheVeniceGlass Week - Palazzo Loredan - The Venice Glass Week HUB - Exhibition - Preview Highlights

 

 

Palazzo Loredan - Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 

The Venice Glass Week HUB - Preview Highlights

The Venice Glass Week HUB - organised by The Venice Glass Week - until September 22 - offers a stunning showcase of glass artistry, featuring an array of captivating installations in Campo Santo Stefano at the historic Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, housed in the grand Palazzo Loredan. Within the opulent piano nobile rooms, visitors can admire an impressive collection of glass works by both national and international artists. These curated pieces, set against the backdrop of Venetian architectural splendor, highlight the innovation, creativity, and craftsmanship of the contemporary glass-making world, celebrating Venice's rich tradition as a global center for glass artistry.

Pietro e Riccardo Ferro - Yellow Eye

Pietro and Riccardo Ferro's work Yellow Eye was made in a furnace on Murano, and is the result of five superimpositions of colour. The glass is cold-worked freehand, using grinding wheels of various sizes and shapes. By digging for the innermost layers of the glass, the Ferro brothers create a unique design that distinguishes their art.

Sebastiano Pedrocco , Giovanna Palandri and Sandro Franchini

The Pistillo collection by Michela Cattai captures the beauty and unpredictability of nature through Murano's blown glass technique. Each freehand-shaped piece, in amber tones, reflects the timeless elegance of its surroundings. With its oblique form, Pistillo symbolizes nature's constant evolution, blending traditional Murano craftsmanship with a modern design language. It’s a tribute to Italian artistry, uniting past and present in glassmaking.

Michela Cattai - Pistil

The new collections of lamps and sculptures by Emmanuel Babled, where the primordial force of nature and the elegance of contemporary design merge into unique works of art. This exhibition highlights the craftsmanship of Venini's masters and the creative innovation that characterize Babled's work.

Emmanuel Babled. Shadow and Lights - Glass and Fire:

Lamps and Sculptures

Emmanuel Babled and Silvia Damiani

This Art and Science installation shows for the first time the synergy between Simone Crestani and Dr. Ioannis Michalou(di)s, a Greek artist working on the ethereal silica aerogel - a nanomaterial made of 99% air and 1% glass, used by  NASA to collect stardust. The artists are merging their techniques to create an intriguing collection of three artworks/allegories on the last layer of planet Earth, our blue and golden breath, our sky in danger.

Simone Cristani and Ioannis Michalou(di)S  

S.O.S.-Save Our Skies

Simone Cristani, Jean Blancheart and Ioannis Michalou

In Campo Santo Stefano

Patrick Vangheluwe, Daniela Ferretti and Dries van Norten

In the Triangle installation, Milan Krajíček presents two glass objects created using a unique authorial technique combining, among other techniques, glass melting in a mould, glass grinding and then thermal deformation, etc. In Vertical Slit, he deliberately cuts a perfect shape in order to distort and deform the perception of order.

 Milan Krajíček - Triangle

Johanne Marie Jensen and Alexander Kirkeby

Leif-Erik Hannikainen, Eleonora de Stribel and Heikki Hannikainen

The traumatic Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 drove Yorgos Papadopoulos to create art that helps to build bridges. Inspired by the amulets used against the - evil eyes - these works were conceived as conveyors of good rather than for protection against evil. Conceptually abstracted, they promote certain values, concepts and attitudes; in this particular case they represent the importance of respect.

Yorgos Papadopoulos - Eye of Reverence I

Among her various approaches in working with glass, with these pieces Françoise Bolli proposes a journey from the manifestations of the material to her questions about the technique known as thermoforming. How can her explorations be read poetically and in a progressive manner, when coherence is not immediately apparent?

Françoise Bolli - Special Vessel

Françoise Bolli and David Landau

Irina Boyko’s collection was inspired by the sketches of Russian suprematists K.Malevich and N.Suetin. The fundamental principle of Suprematism lay in Weightlessness. In the artist's interpretation, the energy of the universe, whether male or female, carries no weight, yet it propels each of us forward towards the new. Slabs of thick and intricately processed glass, used in every object, represent streams of energy, transcending the Earth.

Irina Boyko - Weightlessness

Beatrice Burati Anderson

Giovanni and Servane Giol

Cristina Beltrami

The Caretakers - tells this story through fragile, exposed, vulnerable organ like glass shapes clinging to life on twisted recycled metal or rope support structures. The glass represents the human part – vulnerable, exposed and disabled - while the metal/rope is a kind of a caregiver. This thematic process of uncovering tenderness versus brutality is in constant transformation in my work.

Maria Koshenkova - The Caretakers

Made entirely of recycled glass olive oil jars, this work highlights the intrinsic qualities of industrial glass as a raw material for artistic expression. Deconstructed and reassembled, the jars take on new life and new meaning independent of their previous function. Jewish tradition teaches  - Do not look at the jar, rather at what it contains. These pieces challenge that notion, inviting us to consider the jar itself and its creative potential.

Stefanie Jadd Susnow - Consider the Jar

On the Ponte dell'Accademia

Marisa Convento

Karesansui series﹟1 is inspired by the artist's fascination for Japanese dry gardens. These gardens can be found around Buddhist temples, where you can observe an atmosphere of meditation and contemplation which ensures a divine relationship with the gods. The carefully scraped gravel represents scenic elements of nature. This project of sculptural vases embodies a feeling of space and infinity of time.Tracing and movement are the leitmotif of the entire series.

Camille Jacobs - Karesansui series﹟1

On simply shaped, almost architectural objects the Artist shows power and boldness of these materials. She forms the object from the material only by setting a simple geometric shape, reducing the creation to its essence. Thanks to unique light feature, glass itself is a fascinating material. Concrete without depth, it is the opposite of glass. Both materials are essentially a reduction of the beauty of matter, but each in its own way.

Katarína Pozorová - Relationships of the Matter

In Campo Santo Stefano

Benedetta Gaggia Giannelli Viscardi

The Mosaic Eye interactive installation is based on the triangular-hexagonal structure of the eyes of insects. The work was created from glass, concrete, and light. In the concrete grid eyes, the sandblasted glass lenses serve as a projection surface for video mapping. The eyes' gaze follows the audience's movements with the help of special sensors. This work is a visual reference to the angelic guardians, who constantly watch people.

Csilla Szilágyi - In collaboration with László Pala Papp - Mosaic Eye

The work is made of different compositions of transparent and coloured glass cubes of different sizes, installed regularly or randomly. Inspired by children's toys, the artist represents the concept of life as a game. Sayed Waked invites us to keep the passion and enjoyment of life, appreciate every moment and not take life too seriously, as there are always new opportunities available.

Sayed Waked - My New Game

Sayed Waked

The Fragment Feast object is an homage to the diverse world of glass, combining various glass types into the image of a three-dimensional space. It invites the viewer to appreciate the versatility of glass while highlighting the creative possibilities of repurposing materials into stunning artistic expressions. In this sense it is not only meant as a visual feast but also a testament to sustainability and innovation in contemporary glass design.

Jakub Janďourek - Fragment Feast

Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei

The piece Observation Hill uses as reference the multiple views of the same hill in Antarctica that were painted in watercolour by the Antarctic explorer Edward Wilson - 1872-1912. Anamorphic versions of these archival images are painted in watercolour onto sandblasted glass. These distorted shaped landscapes are corrected when reflected in the mirrored spheres, creating views into miniature worlds.

Polly Gould - Observation Hill