15 International artists were invited to develop works on the theme of glass and light
for the rooms of Palazzo Loredan’s old library, by the curators Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Francesca Giubilei. The works presented speak to the interaction between light and glass from both a formal and conceptual point of view.

Using neon or natural light, borosilicate glass for micro or macro sculptures, old Murano techniques or new technologies, photography, painting and drawing, transparency and luminescence, Teresa Almeida, Mika Aoki, Enrico Tommaso De Paris, Armanda Duarte, Veronica Green, Alan Jaras, Anna-Lea Kopperi, Richard Meitner, Éric Michel, Diogo Navarro, Fernando Quintas, Silvano Rubino, Elisabeth Scherffig, Cesare Toffolo and Robert Wiley will animate the spaces of Istituto Veneto with interesting experimentations.

Vicarte (Lisbon) The research unit is a partnership between the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidade de Lisboa. The research at Vicarte connects the present with the past, developing new materials for glass and ceramics, and for contemporary art.
In addition, traditional and historical production practices are researched, and new theoretical and practical approaches to art are being studied and developed.
Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Venice) is an Academy with the goals of developing and diffusing science, humanities, and art, and to promote and directly support scientific research. The Istituto collaborates with Academies, Universities,
Schools of Higher Studies and Research Centres on both the national and the international level. The project “Glass in Venice” promoted artistic glass in the Murano tradition, as well as work of contemporary artists exploring new techniques.

Glass can absorb, transmit, reflect, and refract light, and it can also multiply or distort
our vision. Glass is a membrane, a border, which can conceal and protect, a diaphragm between the external world and the internal world, between closed and open space.
It has the ability to limit the passage of air or any other material, but at the same time,
it allows light to pass freely through it. Because of these properties glass was considered a magical material in the Middle Ages, linking the visible and the invisible, earthly reality and the divine.
 

She works mainly with glass. Her works represent spores, microorganisms, mould,
natural forms, and biological systems scattered over the most diverse environments
that become animated in the presence of light. Her research is somewhere between
science, art and fantasy. Her transparent and delicate works seem to disappear in the
dark and become visible only with light.

Her origins and studies allowed her to live in close proximity to the culture and
the art of the Maoris, which has strongly influenced her work. She uses bright and
dense colours, brilliant materials and fluorescent paint, ingredients that transport us
to her symbolic world. Her works are developed on different levels of interpretation
and formal realisation: beginning from the light of day the natural areas that
are represented plunge the observer into all-consuming and deceptive domains,
transporting him to the darkness of a completely different world, one that is also
magic and seductive.

He is a scientist and an artist who after leaving his career as industrial researcher and
microscopist has directed his energy to the study and relation between art and science.
Alan Jaras transforms light into art works. His works are classical photographs of light beams passing through sheet glass with varying surface attributes at differing angles. Multi-coloured images result from this process, recalling the depths of the sea or faraway galaxies.

He is a French multi-media artist who works mainly with light and colour. His lightworks are essentially based in research on the immaterial. Light plays a very important role and is the vehicle for conveying his sensitivity. Its both wave and particle nature, material and immaterial, effects transportation from the real to the imaginary.

The poetic and intellectual work of Richard Meitner reflects a great variety of
influences, from Japanese textile to Italian painting, from applied arts to science. His
works in glass often include other materials, such us rust, enamel, bronze, terracotta,
and paint. Meitner plays with unusual juxtapositions of shapes and materials that
speak to the interface between art and science, intellect and spirit.

Her artistic research revolves around the concept of space. The primary technique is
drawing, very detailed and able to show us surfaces in the smallest details, perceivable as the intimate structure of things. Over the last years she has devoted herself to the observation and photography of heterogeneous glass surfaces, which she converts into pastel drawings on paper. This project connected with glass is a study, through drawing, of vision and light.

As a multi-media artist he uses the most expressive language from painting to
installation, from video to digital images. His works have their roots both in science
and in philosophy. His installations, quite often site-specific, transform the space in
which they are exhibited into a place of reflection on contemporaneity: the macro and
microscopic reality become represented like our DNA, like the atoms from the time
of Democritus that represent the elements composing any material. Everything arrives
in a mixture of light and sound, glass, plastics and steel.

The current exhibition in 2015, “Within light / Inside glass. An intersection between art and science” takes place during the International Year of Light 2015, a global initiative aimed at increasing public awareness of the great importance of light and light-based technologies for our future.
As a precursor to this exhibition and its theme of glass and light, a collaboration has been developed between Axo Light, one of the most dynamic Italian lighting companies, Vicarte and the artist Richard Meitner. Art and industrial design will join forces in this special project for which Meitner will develop prototypes for a series of lamps utilizing both the advanced lighting technology of Axo Light and the experience and research represented by Vicarte. This exhibition will feature some of the first steps connected with this collaboration.

Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti
Palazzo Loredan
Campo S. Stefano
San Marco 2945
I-30124 Venezia, Italy ‎
+39 041 240 7711 ‎
istitutoveneto.it