Sculptor Sarah Sze makes a sharp turn to glass at Berengo Studio in Murano.
Adriano Berengo is having problems with Paul McCarthy’s butt-plugs. There are three of them, 12in or so tall and made entirely in blown glass, sitting on a shelf in Berengo’s modest Murano offce. The room is strewn with other odd and beguiling glass objects made for artists of the highest rank. McCarthy’s, though, are the easiest to identify.
McCarthy wants his glass butt-plugs to double as whisky bottles but the whisky isn’t pouring, it’s dribbling down the sides. Berengo has explained that to work, the plug bottle would need some kind of rim, as it were, but McCarthy will not allow a violation of the plug’s pure form. Berengo, now almost 70, with shaggy grey hair and boundless charm and energy, shrugs his shoulders. He is used to dealing with the artistic bent and if that’s what McCarthy wants, that’s what he gets.
McCarthy is one of 27 artists appearing in the fifth edition of Glasstress, an exhibition of artists’ work in glass to run during the Venice Biennale, produced by Berengo’s glass-making studio and key to his long-term mission to save Murano glass-making from extinction.
As we speak, another artist appearing in the show, the star American sculptor Sarah Sze, is scoping out the Palazzo Franchetti, a neo-Gothic pile on the Grand Canal, where most of the Glasstress works will be shown. (A major installation by the French artist Loris Gréaud, a ceiling of 1,000 or so individually blown glass clouds, is being shown in a former foundry behind Berengo’s office. Next year, Berengo hopes to convert it into a permanent museum and exhibition space.)
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Esta historia es de la edición June 2017 de Wallpaper.
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Guiding Light - Designer Joe Armitage follows his grandfather's footsteps in India, reissuing his elegant midcentury lamp and creating a new chandelier for Nilufar Gallery
For some of us, family inheritances I tend to be burdensome, taking up space, emotionally and physically, in both our minds and attics. For the London-based designer and architect Joe Armitage, however, a family heirloom has taken him somewhere lighter and brighter, across generations and continents, and into the path of Le Corbusier. This is the story of a lamp designed by Edward Armitage in India 72 years ago, which has today been expanded into a collection of lights by his grandson Joe.
POLE POSITION
A compact Melbourne house with a small footprint is big on efficiency and experimentation
URBAN OASIS
At an art-filled Mexico City residence, New York designer Giancarlo Valle has put his own spin on the country's traditional craft heritage
WARM FRONT
Designer Clive Lonstein elevates his carefully curated Manhattan home with rich textures and fabrics
BALCONY SCENE
A Brazilian island hotel offers a unique approach to the alfresco experience
ENSEMBLE CAST
How architect Anne Holtrop is leaving his mark on the Middle East
Survival mode
A new show looks at preparing for a post-apocalyptic landscape (and other catastrophes)
FLASK FORCE
A limited-edition perfume collaboration between two Spanish craft masters says it with flowers
BLOOM SERVICE
A flower-shaped brutalist beauty in Geneva gets a refresh
SECOND NATURE
A remodelled museum in Lisbon, by Kengo Kuma & Associates, meshes Japanese and Portuguese influences to create a space that sits in harmony with its surroundings