«Glass, a special material and part of our daily life, testifies to the joy, anxiety and worries of our life. In his presence we reflect on the relationship between life and death, and between tradition and reality ». Ai Weiwei he chose glass to investigate themes that are dear to him such as man and nature, spirituality and the continuous suggestions of the contemporary world. The result is La Commedia Umana, the one-man show opening in Venice, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, on 28 August 2022. Among the works on display there is also the largest suspended sculpture ever made in Murano glass.
In collaboration with theAbbey of San Giorgio Maggiore – Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Berengo Studio and Fondazione Berengo, the exhibition offers, alongside some of the artist’s most famous and recent works in wood and porcelain, a new selection of glass sculptures, the result of an experiment that the artist has begun in Beijing in 2009 and culminated in a three-year project conceived in Murano.
The fulcrum of the exhibition, which will be housed in the evocative setting of the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, is The Human Comedya huge suspended sculpture made up of over 2000 pieces of black glass handmade by the masters of Berengo Studio in Murano. With a width of over six meters and a height of almost nine meters, the monumental installation is the largest suspended Murano glass sculpture ever made. Thanks to the skilful study of light developed by the Luce5 team to enhance its details, the work reveals a cascade of unexpected bones, organs and objects which act as a poignant reflection on the alienating relationship between man and the natural world, a message that resonates strongly in the fragile ecosystem of the Venetian lagoon.
With a weight of 2700 kg, the monumental “chandelier” debuted in Rome in March 2022 and returns to its Venetian origins, joining eight unpublished glass worksamong which Brainless Figure in Glass2022, a self-portrait conceived through modern technologies and manual sculpture;Glass Root, 2022, which harks back to the artist’s woodwork after the discovery of remnants of deforestation and natural causes in Brazil in 2017; and everyday objects, such as Glass Takeout Box2022, symbol of globalization (presented for the first time in marble in 2015), e Glass Toilet Paper2022, which reflects the fragility of our society.
Entitled The Human Comedy – Memento Mori and curated by Ai Weiwei, Adriano Berengo and Carmelo A. Grasso, Director of the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore – Benedicti Claustra Onlus, the exhibition will also present a selection of Ai Weiwei’s most significant works, such as Illumination, 2019 (loaned by Lisson Gallery), an iconic selfie taken by Weiwei in Chengdu, China, in 2009, as police escorted him to a hotel elevator; And Dropping at Han Dynasty Urn, 2016, a provocative series of black and white photographs recreated in LEGO bricks. The exhibition will also feature two of Ai Weiwei’s latest LEGO works: Sleeping Venus (After Giorgione), 2022 and Know Thyself2022, two debut works commissioned by Galleria Continua, and Untitled (After Mondrian), 2022, loaned by the Berlin gallery neugerriemschneider.
TO WEIWEI
THE HUMAN COMEDY – MEMENTO MORI
From 28 August to 27 November 2022
Opening: from 10.00 to 18.00.
Every day, closed on Tuesdays.
Free admission.
The exhibition is curated by Ai Weiwei, Adriano Berengo and Carmelo A. Grasso.