Page 68 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

BIENNALE VENEZIA

50TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION 2003

Dreams and Conflicts - The Dictatorship of the Viewer

ARTE COMMUNICATIONS

la Biennale di Venezia MASUDA HIROMI

PLAY THE GLASS “con tenerezza”
12 June-2 November, 2003
Cloister S. Francesco della Vigna , Castello 2786, Arsenale, Venice

5 minutes by walk from the Biennale Corderie, Arsenale
MASUDA HIROMI Vaporetto stop Arsenale, boat n. 1 or Celestia stop, boat n. 41 or n. 52
PLAY THE GLASS Patronage The Japan Foundation
INSTALLATION Organization Arte Communications, Venice

PLAY THE GLASS “con tenerezza” by Japanese artist Masuda Hiromi
will be exhibited from the 12th of June to the 2nd of November at the
Cloister of S. Francesco della Vigna located near the Arsenale of Venice.
This event coincides with the 50th Visual Arts Biennale of Venice.
This exhibit, curated by Paolo De Grandis, presents a new work created
expressly for the suggestive architectural space of the ancient Cloister
of S. Francesco della Vigna in Venice. As Pierre Restany has emphasized
“….it is through the double meaning of the term “Play” -to play a
game/ to play a musical instrument- that Hiromi Masuda works glass
since 1980. Her works are similar to three dimensional musical scores
that represent melodic links of the material. Reading them evokes an
alternative solfeggio of blown glass”. The irregular bubbles of PLAY THE
GLASS “con tenerezza” are created by blowing the cast paste in the
same way as one would blow an wind instrument. Masuda has visited
Venice for many years, loving her history, her light, and her natural
lagoon life. She has worked with the glass masters of Murano. Venice
is the city “par excellence” in which existential culture is casted with
play and the artist has found the precise moment of crystallization.
Poetic freedom supervenes a fascinating aspect of naturalized nature:
the proliferation of a glass flora from marine life that originates in
dreams and then leads to yet another dream.
“Church…when I heard this, I immediately thought about death as a theme.
A conflict between nations; a quarrel between people; unexpected accidents:
people going senselessly to their deaths. Now the world has gone dark. In
the past 11 years, it began for me with the death of my husband and then
facing the somber death of three other people close to me. Let us play a
requiem on the glass. But when I stood in the church yard, it was light.
Although it was an enclosed space, it felt as though I could have looked
up at the sky questioningly, and somebody would have smiled kindly back
at me from within a bright light. The bewailing of dying before one’s time
and the agony of being left behind in this world; both are released by this
smile of kindness. The time will come when you will understand that the
soul of the departed and the soul that remains are side by side, and will
go on living together. The departed gently caress the souls of those who
remain. Keep living, Keep burning brightly.
So that we may sing praise to the living with the glass, please touch them.
Please caress them”. (Hiromi)

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