Barovier&Toso participates in “Murano Illumina il Mondo” (Murano Lights Up The World) with two signature chandeliers, designed and created for the occasion
Piazza San Marco becomes the stage for the event that, for the first time, shines a spotlight on Murano glass in front of the Basilica. Promoted by The Venice Glass Week and the City of Venice, “Murano Illumina il Mondo” (Murano Lights Up The World) is an exhibition project in which Barovier&Toso proudly and passionately participates. Along with eight other Murano furnaces, the company lights up an exceptional Venetian venue, the vaults of the “Procuratie Vecchie”, which stretch for 152 meters from the Clock Tower towards the Napoleonic Wing, with a portico of 50 full-arch arcades.
The Murano glass craft industry meets contemporary art, proving to be a forge of new ideas and an international center for experimentation and collaboration. A total of twelve artists and designers are involved in the project, selected by a special Scientific Committee composed of Rosa Barovier Mentasti, glass historian, David Landau, Trustee of Pentagram Stiftung, and Chiara Squarcina, Director of the Museum Activities Area of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. All artists were invited to reinterpret and transform a daily use object, such as the chandelier, into a true work of art. Barovier&Toso participates in this unique public art intervention with two chandeliers. These are original masterpieces, strictly created for the occasion, born from the collaboration between the company’s master glassmakers and three internationally renowned artists, Giorgio Vigna, and the duo composed of Monica Guggisberg and Philip Baldwin.
Reality and imagination confront each other: they scrutinize, court, and move together. Orchestrating this dialogue, which brings to life Siphonophera, is the artist Giorgio Vigna, alongside whom the skilled craftsmen of Barovier&Toso have jointly walked. Inspired by the wind and the water, natural elements that shape the form of Siphonophera, creating a sense of movement and fluidity. However, the collaboration with Vigna brings this great novelty for the company, the diamond-cut glass. The creation of each piece required, as a first step, the creation, in the furnace, of a massive layer of glass around a blown bubble, through several successive lifts, and, as a second phase, in the grinding department, a long process of subtraction, when cold, necessary to define all the faces. The result is a complex, multifaceted object, hollow in the most inner part, where the LED is hidden.
Il Redentore, the chandelier designed by Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg interprets the high craftsmanship-technology paradigm through an innovative approach to material and light. The distinctive signature of the two artists and designers, linked by a partnership of over forty years, manifests itself both in technical aspects and in a very direct formal lexicon, characterized by clear lines and a strong and vibrant combination of colors. Il Redentore was born in honor of the famous Venetian festival, traditionally accompanied by spectacular fireworks. An explosion of lights and colors: symbolically and iconographically this is the inspiration that animates the light sculpture.
With this artistic project, Barovier&Toso once again demonstrates its craftsmanship skills, its attitude towards experimentation, and its innovative spirit, reaching out, over the next three months, to a truly vast audience, made up of people from all over the world.
