The world’s oldest glassworks, whose roots stretch back to 1295, has deliberately stepped away from design to turn to Fabrizio Plessi, a visionary pioneer in the integration of art, technology, and nature, to give form to the element that narrates life more than any other: water. The title reveals the soul of his vision. This Italian expression, describing the paradox of being overwhelmed by something seemingly marginal, captures the essence of Plessi’s philosophy: the most elementary forms can contain infinite complexity, and what appears simple and everyday, like a glass or water, becomes the key to exploring profound emotions and poetic transformations.
Accepting the invitation, Plessi, in his first true exhibition dedicated to glass, returns to the origins of the material, exploring its most iconic archetypes, the bottle and the glass, transforming these symbolic forms into visionary sculptures. Bottles and glasses solidify in the gesture of moving water, suspended between calm and storm, no longer objects of use but living presences: flows of energy in which turbulence becomes matter, becomes light, reinventing Murano glass as pure emotion. “I have made peace with glass.” Plessi says this with the voice of someone who has crossed a long distance, not only materially but inwardly. “For years I was wary of glass. I didn’t like it, too rigid, too closed for my idea of fluidity. In this gigantic adventure I experimented with it, and only then did I love it for its lightness, transparency, elegance, fluidity. I tried to render fluid an element that is hard, almost stubborn. I like the idea that no one has ever thought of approaching a glass of water the way I have. The content becomes the container. Even the title is paradoxical: to lose oneself where one would never expect to. But I love paradoxes, illogicalities.” Alongside the glass works, drawings reveal the genesis of the forms created, standing both as testimony to the creative process and as a tribute to Barovier&Toso, symbol of the meeting between artistic vision and artisanal mastery. The monumental ring-shaped installation, in dialogue with four historic chandeliers from the glassworks, suffused with images and sounds of water, evokes the encounter between the liquid element that defines Plessi and the fire of the Murano furnaces, a metaphor for the fusion of inspiration and technique. Between contemporary art and tradition, even the perfume bottle Movimenti dell’anima echoes the geometry of the ring and the turbulent forms of the glass sculptures. “I created a little gem, a perfume bottle and a gigantic circle, over eight meters wide. In this grand sculpture I inserted hundreds of luminous LEDs. It represents, in part, my self-portrait, because I love the roundness of life.”
In an essay, Bruno Corà, president of the Fondazione Burri, defines Plessi as “The most Venetian of contemporary artists, by physical empathy and poetic destiny.” Corà emphasizes how, throughout his long career, the artist “has exalted and celebrated water and light, but also matter in all its forms, primary elements of life on the planet and of Venice’s history.” It is a tribute to the energy of the lagoon city, but also an act of reconciliation between contemporary art and craftsmanship, between the language of new media and the millenary tradition of glass. With Perdersi in un bicchier d’acqua, Barovier&Toso Arte joyfully reaffirms its role as both guardian and experimenter of Murano glass, opening itself to dialogue with contemporary art, with Plessi masterfully transforming tradition into visionary energy. And so, in a glass of water, one truly does lose oneself, only to find oneself again inside beauty.
Immagine in evidenza: Installation view – Photo Studio Pointer
