Two new artworks made in collaboration with Berengo Studio will be exhibited as part of this year’s Italian Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. “TERRÆ AQUÆ. Italy and the Intelligence of the Sea,” curated by Guendalina Salimei will feature installations by the Italian artist Alfredo Pirri and Venice-based artist Marya Kazoun which highlight two diverse aspects of Italy’s modern multicultural landscape. Set within Salimei’s “open (acquatic) square” the site-specific works present evolutions of artworks presented at the exhibition Glasstress in 2024 curated by Adriano Berengo and Umberto Croppi.
Italian artist Alfredo Pirri’s work expands on his spatial installation Paradisi (2024) – Paradise – that partially resumes the work entitled Passi (Steps), which the artist has been creating since 2000, consisting of a floor of shattered mirrors. Superimposed on this modified space are a number of crystal half-spheres handmade in the furnace and variously treated. The image obtained from this superimposition of glass on mirror is half real, half illusory. The real half spheres of glass complement each other in their reflection on the ground, giving the sensation of a spatial buoyancy and temporal suspension that cancels the truth of the material and its environment. The result is a series of surreal bubbles of existence that ask us to question our own surroundings.
Meanwhile the Venice-based Lebanese-Canadian artist Marya Kazoun presents an evolution of her work Long Winter (2024) which the artist has described as a “reflection on the fragility of human existence.” Delicate and haunting traces of residential and industrial buildings from different places and times form an abandoned frozen ghost town. The art work is a diorama of a place in a parallel world. The installation, made of broken glass pieces of various dimensions carefully glued one by one and petrified with UV light, results in a melting frozen cityscape. It is a reminder that our time on this planet is limited. With its different layers of content, Long Winter explores the rising brittleness of a world in turmoil. Natural disasters, migration, displacements, social injustices are marking and reshaping our world and it is in this fragility that its true essence is revealed.
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