The Island of San Giorgio Maggiore hosts Ai Weiwei’s solo show, including glass sculptures and LEGO installations

by Editorial staff, written on 08/05/2022, 12:26:37
Categories: Exhibitions / Topics: Contemporary art

Ai Weiwei’s solo show entitled La Commedia Umana – Memento Mori will be set up on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice from 28 August to 27 November 2022. Also on display is the largest suspended Murano glass sculpture ever made.

From 28 August to 27 November 2022 it will be held onIsland of San Giorgio Maggiore to Venice there personal from Ai Weiwei by title The Human Comedy – Memento Mori which intends to explore topics such as the relationship between man and nature, between spirituality and the continuous suggestions of the contemporary world. An exhibition in collaboration with theAbbey of San Giorgio Maggiore – Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Berengo Studio And Berengo Foundation which will propose, alongside some of his most famous and recent works in wood and porcelain, a new selection of glass sculpturesthe result of an experiment that Ai Weiwei started 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 Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, is The Human ComedyA big suspended sculpture composed by over two thousand pieces of black glass handmade by the masters of Berengo Studio a Murano. With a width of over six meters and a height of almost nine meters, the monumental installation is the largest Murano glass suspended sculpture ever made.

Thanks to study of light developed by the Luce5 team to enhance the details, the work reveals a cascade of unexpected bones, organs and objects that intends to make us reflect on the alienating relationship between man and the natural world.

“This vast suspended black glass sculpture is unique, nothing like it has ever been seen or made before,” he commented Adriano Berengo, founder of Berengo Studio and the Berengo Foundation. “Part of his beauty remains a mystery, a human tragedy, a comedy, arousing a tangle of conflicting feelings and suggestions that each of us must try to unravel in his own way. It is a work that arouses emotions, which forces us to deal not only with our own mortality, but also with the role that our lives have in the great theater of human history ”.

The monumental “chandelier“of 2700 kilos made its debut in Rome in March 2022 and returns to its Venetian origins, adding to eight unpublished glass worksamong which Brainless Figure in Glass (2022), a self-portrait conceived through modern technologies and manual sculpture; Glass Root (2022) which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 remains of deforestation and natural causes in Brazil in 2017; and everyday objects, such as Glass Takeout Box (2022), symbol of globalization (presented for the first time in marble in 2015), e Glass Toilet Paper (2022) which reflects the fragility of our society.

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 exhibit a selection of the artist’s most significant works, such as Illumination (2019), an iconic selfie taken 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. There will also be two of Ai Weiwei’s latest LEGO works: Sleeping Venus (After Giorgione) And Know Thyselfboth of 2022, and Untitled (After Mondrian)also from 2022.

For info: http://www.abbaziasangiorgio.it; www.fondazioneberengo.org

Hours: Every day from 10am to 6pm. Closed on Tuesdays.

Free admission.

Image: Ai Weiwei, The Human Comedy (2020). Photo by Francesco Allegretto