Melania Rossi
Fabre mette in campo un’arte che non misura la storia come portato dell’attualità e, dunque, della sociologia, bensì come il corpo a corpo della materia metamorfica la cui memoria si dissolve nella remota notte dei tempi. Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
Fabre cristallizza sia le ossa che il vetro e li rende sacri. Fa lo stesso con l’esistenza umana nella sua presenza temporale mistica nella realtà, guidata dall’immaginazione. Dimitri Ozerkov
Le sculture in vetro e ossa di Jan Fabre, tacita allusione alla brevità della vita sulla Terra e alla nostra mortalità. Katerina Koskina
Indubbiamente alcuni dei lavori qui esposti passeranno alla storia tra i vetri artistici contemporanei più importanti del XXI secolo. Adriano Berengo
ITA
ISBN 978-88-99534-29-5
JAN FABRE GLASS AND BONE SCULPTURES 1977 - 2017
Jan Fabre rappresenta la sua idea di completezza e di spiritualità attraverso una iperfigurazione, una stratificazione di elementi perfettamente riconoscibili che uniti insieme diventano enigma.
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FOREWORD
/ ALBERTO BARCELLA
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THE GLASS SENTINEL / MELANIA ROSSI
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IMAGES OF THE DISTANT WORLD OF THE ‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’
/ GIACINTO DI PIETRANTONIO
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ONLY IMAGINATION IS LEFT ALIVE / DIMITRI OZERKOV
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THE CREATIVE OBSESSIONS OF JAN FABRE / KATERINA KOSKINA
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THAT GLASS IN THE HEAD / ADRIANO BERENGO
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 120
WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
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THE GLASS SENTINEL /
MELANIA ROSSI
He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand. / Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jan Fabre, Me in a Preserving Jar (I), 1979 black-and-white photo, 18 × 14 cm. Photo: Luc Thibau. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (M HKA). © Angelos bvba /
A fascination for the alchemy of matter is always present in the art of Jan Fabre. Then comes its combination with shape, generated by the artist’s ideas, through personal memories, associations, visions and universal symbolic references. But in every work by Fabre something profoundly substantial, chemical almost, organic, always remains. The elements that come together to make his universe unfold meet in the same way as in the natural world, by magnetic charge. They are attracted in the artist’s mind, bound through his thought, and moulded in the drawing, sculpture or performative action. So the world-of-Fabre appears to us: physical and spiritual, consistent to the brink of obsession, drawing from artistic tradition, science, religion and myth. The rhythm with which this world is created each time and adapts to the context is fast, the artist is guided by intuition and intelligence, he progresses by visions. “Let’s jazz,” he repeats every time he takes to the stage, in an improvisation that leaves nothing to chance. The bodies and images forged by Jan Fabre display ancient meanings along with new intuitions and open the doors to another reality. A reality we believe in because it is tangible and clearly perceivable. We are in the cloister of the Abbey of San Gregorio in Venice, and right in the centre, where the old well used to be, the linchpin of the monks’ daily life, is a large glass scarab (Holy Dung Beetle with Laurel Tree, 2017), with a glass laurel tree on its back. In this deconsecrated place now a creature shows up that is a concentration of the most ancient meanings of both sacred and profane spirituality. Where does this sentinel come from? Where is it headed? Is it a phantom bringing an inescapable message of death or an oracle announcing the light of a new life? The scarab, an animal bearing an almost prehistoric aspect, is a recurrent metaphor in Jan Fabre’s work. The artist studied these insects in the books of the famous entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre; he has drawn or glued them on works on paper; reproduced their shape and movement during performances; made impressive installations and sculptures with thousands of iridescent wing-cases; enlarged them and cast them in bronze, giving them the role of spiritual guard, knight in armour, defender of beauty. In this small and tough, apparently insignificant insect, past, present and future coexist. Death and life. Stratified with cultures, beliefs and experiences, the scarab has become an almost timeless being.
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Terror, disgust, almost morbid curiosity, memories of amulets observed in Egyptian museums, universally renowned literary metamorphoses, illustrations of ancient books, children’s games that we still dare not recount today. In any case, its image belongs to a collective past that Fabre projects towards the future, translating it into art, making it a metaphor through his imagination. The scarab is the ancient symbol of metamorphosis, constantly on its way towards an unknown destiny. Sacred to the ancient Egyptians, known by the name of khepri which means “spiritual transformation,” the scarab represents eternal return but without the Nietzschean nihilism implying the incessant repetition of the same, because it instead embodies the sun’s flow of light which produces and continues life. At the same time, this insect is an allusion to what resists the transience of life, because it remains the same even after death. While life slips away, the “armour” nevertheless remains the same. Our packaging, made of skin, flesh and soft tissues, does not have the same resistance. That still and mute insect’s carcass makes us think of what we feel before the coffin of a loved-one. In reality, we do not feel anything when we look at it. We have the clear perception that that is only the outer casing. Where has life gone? Where is that specific aura? There is no way it can have dissolved, so what has it turned into?
/ Luxor, Valley of the Queens. Tomb of Nefertari, detail, fresco, first hall. Photo: Sandro Vannini
Myth comes to our aid with a poetic clarity that religion rejects. To save herself from Apollo’s passion, Daphne disappears, but she does not die. She transforms into a laurel tree. As her flight slows down, her delicate feet become sturdy roots, her hair changes into foliage and her arms rise up towards the sky, becoming flexible branches. The story is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which concludes as such: “rimanet nitor unus in illa,” of that nymph “a unique splendour remains in her.” In nature laurel is a resistant and healing evergreen plant that does not obey the cycle of the seasons; in art it is the symbol of sublimation. And it is a laurel branch that Fabre places on the scarab’s shell, thus doubling the degree of eternity. In the exact spot where the entomologist pins the insect to his catalogue, Fabre makes a new life, the most lasting life, grow. The scarab’s incessant movement also refers to the myth of Sisyphus, punished by the gods to push a boulder in eternity owing to his excessive love for life. And if, as Camus says, “Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them,” in this work by Fabre, Sisyphus is a rebellious angel in the form of a scarab that accepts its punishment, happy to sport its eternal boulder, symbol of the tragic love of all living beings for the life that escapes us. As spectators, the sublime instant of art allows us to remove ourselves from mortal nature and see life in the form of eternity. But in order for this to happen, the artist has to push himself beyond in our place. He has to try to seek the pure form of the eternal. Artists from all times have sought a colour or symbol to depict that spiritual purity. Very often they have done so by distancing themselves from figuration, through the use of gold in the backgrounds of medieval panels, the metaphysical azure of Piero della Francesca, the black square of Malevich’s secular spiritualism and that perfect blue of Yves Klein. Jan Fabre represents his idea of completeness and spirituality through hyperfiguration, by stratifying perfectly recognizable elements that come together to form an enigma. This way of working is without doubt a reference to the late Middle Ages of Bosch, but this scarab-totem’s position in the centre of the cloister, the epiphanic nature of its apparition and our movement around it, trying to interpret it, also bring something else to mind. It conjures up the epic scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when an enigmatic black monolith appears: the thanatophobic and minimalistic interpretation of the sparkling crystal pyramid from The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke, the story which was the inspiration for the film. Like that of Kubrick, Fabre’s sentinel-scarab comes from far away and brings the seed of a new thought. They are both messages from a futuristic Prometheus.
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THE CREATIVE OBSESSIONS OF JAN FABRE /
KATERINA KOSKINA
Jan Fabre, The Future Merciful Heart for Men and Women, 2008, Murano glass, Bic Ink, human bones, (2×) 80 × 100 × 201 cm. Detail. Photo: Attilio Maranzano. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum. © Angelos bvba /
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Jan Fabre has obsessions. Although evident, these obsessions are not as obvious as his passion for the research into theories, methods, means, and practices, which leads to the utter identification of work and life, and also to an interdisciplinary approach to – and experience of – the artistic act. By “obsessions” I am not referring only to those founded on profound convictions and solid references; there are also those which are not so deeply rooted and haunting but that are linked with an admiration for monuments and artists of times past and with a return to certain places. Always with his native Antwerp as his base and hideout and as the core reference in his art, a few other cities, like Athens and Venice, keep recurring among his new destinations. Athens is for the artist the locus from where he draws his persistent and frequent references to ancient Greek philosophy and mythology: the process of hybridization (mythical beings, Centaurs, Sphinxes, etc.) and transmutation (humans into clouds, rain and plants), the in-between status of the gods, the existence of demi-gods. All these transformations along with the essence of the Greek tragedy led Jan Fabre to promote as main themes and cornerstones of his entire oeuvre the elevation of the human being through its deification or the humbling of the divine through its identification with the human, and the “balancing out” of positive and negative behaviours and passions such as wrath–serene happiness, sexual drive–love, uplifting through pain, life–death, the beauty of deterioration. In the case of Venice, the city becomes the wider exhibition space hosting this year’s Glass and Bone Sculptures 1977–2017 show. Jan Fabre apart from his participation in the National Belgian Pavilion in 1984 and in several group shows since then, keeps coming back as of 2005, with major solo shows or installations during the Venice Biennial. A sensitive viewer will soon realise that the choice of venue forms part of the work. The emblematic sites he selects – whether they are Palazzi, former ecclesiastic buildings (schools, cloisters, churches) or industrial facilities (Spazio Thetis) – confirm the intention of setting the work in formerly or currently active places that witnessed the flourishing of the human intellect and artistic production or that were marked by the exercise of various forms of authority and the curtailing of human passions. By setting his works in such contexts, Fabre ensures that they are read through the dialectic relation of past and present. At the same time he reactivates the site and invests it with new meaning. The space, already a bearer of cultural expression and a historical relic of another age, receives the new works which also comment, overtly
or subtly, on timeless issues which acquire new import due to the space itself. This practice explains the obsession – strategy, you might call it – with visual installations-happenings in museum palaces (such as the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Louvre, the State Hermitage Museum, among others). These outstanding interior or outdoor spaces enable Jan Fabre to traverse – and converse with – space, time, and local history but also with different worlds, eras, social classes, theories and politics, depending on the educational, religious, political or combined role for which each building had been constructed.
The Abbey of San Gregorio
/ Jan Fabre, The Future Merciful Heart for Men and Women, 2008, Murano glass, Bic Ink, human bones, (2×) 80 × 100 × 201 cm. Photo: Attilio Maranzano. Collection Kröller-Müller Museum. © Angelos bvba
1. Plato’s Cratylus (402a) contains the famous allusion to Heraclitus: “Heraclitus says [...] that all things move and nothing remains still,” and he likens the universe to the current of a river, saying that “you cannot step twice into the same stream.”; http:// classics.mit.edu/ Plato/cratylus.htm (accessed 25 March 2017).
2. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, 1964, 1994), 69.
3. Heraclitus. On Nature, B.53; https:// plato.stanford.edu/ entries/heraclitus/ (accessed 25 March 2017).
For the 57th Venice Biennale Jan Fabre has chosen the Abbey of San Gregorio. Although over the centuries the edifice has lost its religious character to a more secular one, its architecture and its strategic relation with the surroundings remain potent and inscribed in its memory. Where monks used to live and pray between the tenth and the eighteenth century, attempting to approach the sacred and the sublime and tame their flesh, just as the human mind and will tamed the seas to establish the Serenissima, now these ambiguous images converse among themselves as well as with the space. Fabre’s exhibits, made mainly of glass and bone for this show, are conceptually linked to the former religious function of a place that still bears the memory of the meditation and prayers once conducted here to the forgiveness of the dead and the absolution of the sins of the living. The images pose questions while remaining “open” to the viewer, seeking their consummation through his or her participation. Thus they come to meet their recipient, who activates his cognitive mechanisms based on the mysticism of the space. At the same time the works, as contradictory symbols of luxury and death, provoke the viewer’s emotional involvement. The challenge to the audience for active participation rather than simple viewing reflects the artist’s deep need to get the viewer involved in an experience which may have started as personal expression of the creator’s intimate and hermetic inspiration, but once translated into artefact acquires the nature of a collective experience. In recent years this venue has often been used for exhibitions and other events; it is advantageously located at a strategic point along the city’s main thoroughfare on the Canal Grande, with access to the Laguna and unique views of Saint Mark’s Square, the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and Punta della Dogana. It is a vantage point which also has a glass room with unobstructed views of the most striking part of the city’s historic and cultural centre and its unique landscape. In other words, a strategic location that underscores the city’s relation to water as a source of life and affluence but also as the cause of its current tribulations and a threat to its existence.1 The inside-outwards view from the Abbey through one of its windows also affords specific vedute to the gaze. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes that “through the poet’s window the house converses about immensity with the world:”2 the space may be panoramic, but it is still defined by the openings of the windows. The viewer sees a space by definition delineated, demarcated, even if the open horizon of the laguna gives the illusion that one can see everything. The illusion as a state of affairs also dominates over the city, over contemporary Venice whose first impression is of a densely populated place bustling with life. Yet these crowds are not inhabitants but transient visitors, silent or noisy viewers of a city-stage set where the monuments of its past – its solidified memory – preserve in the present a city that lives under the threat of succumbing to the lagoon. In Venice the war between man and nature seemed for centuries to have ended in favour of man; but in reality it is not over. It has started again, confirming that “War is father of all and king of all.”3 So the exhibits of bone and glass are allegories; images open to interpretations of matters of essence beyond the obvious. Aided by their specific surroundings, they
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by the paradigmatic presence of excrement. Equally, but in an inverse manner, glass is so fascinating in its smoothness, reflections, transparency of colours, and material perfection, that even pigeon droppings become beautiful. So, what better means to divinely manifest a living being which, albeit so sweet, nevertheless always ends up on a crude gutter discharging its unpleasant products to the ground?
1. Koen Vanderstukken, Glass: Virtual, Real (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2016).
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Fabre uses glass as an alchemic means, a medium whose materiality is itself part of the message. On looking at his creations, I always have the sensation that the work never ends when the piece is completed and that the eye is not sufficient to perceive the work in its entirety. Besides, experimentation has always been at the centre of his work, which means that we are driven to use and go beyond all the known, tried-and-tested work techniques. To give one example, the large scarab (Holy Dung Beetle with Laurel Tree, 2017) is an incredibly complex piece of work, one of a kind, in which different techniques and methodologies converge: from casting, used to make the body, to the lampworking technique, and putting together Murano glass and borosilicate to make the tree on its back. And this is how it has been in our many experiences together: constantly using melting, assembly, polishing and dyeing techniques, while applying our know-how and trying out new roads that we then chose to pursue. Furthermore, it is important to underline how most of the sculptures and installations made in my furnace bear the trademark of the intense and deepest blue of “The Hour Blue”, the passage between night and day: the artist’s signature and most cherished symbol of the process of metamorphosis. I think that in glass Fabre has found the same magic and power as in that colour. Glass: a material that goes from an incandescent liquid state to icy solidity, but that at the same time is never truly static because of its elasticity1 and indomitable essence. The more I worked with the artist for the successive Glasstress events and special projects, the more I came close to the thousand aspects of his volcanic mind constantly moving between different artistic disciplines. When I heard him define himself and his performers as “warriors of beauty,” I realized that never could I have thought of a more apt definition for my glassmakers when with the artists they form a team struggling for the creation of an artwork. Performance and art: for me that sums up glass perfectly. But in its power, Fabre’s work first requests extreme precision and reflection. I am thinking of the cross made with thousands of tiny shards of lamp-blown glass, each one positioned by hand, just like his famous jewel beetles. From the pigeons of the Shitting Doves of Peace and Flying Rats to the 3,000 human bones in The Future Merciful Heart for Men and Women (2008), from the tortoises and guts of Greek Gods in a Body-Landscape (2011), to the globes with myriad sperm cells in the installation Planets I–IX (2011), up to the very latest, already cited, works on beetles on a gigantic scale, never made to such a size anywhere in the world before, I proudly think that very few furnaces would have been able to bring to life, not just the product, but also that magic that Fabre was seeking in the glass. We have faced ambitious works and authentic technical challenges, in which once again this material has been loaded with intrinsic meaning, acquiring a value beyond its superficial appearance. Besides, since its outset in 1977 with the large baby’s dummy The Pacifier, the topic of bones has presupposed a point of view that is not limited to the outer form, but also to the inner sense, insisting on the specificity of both elements. The exhibition Glass and Bone Sculptures 1977–2017 takes its lead precisely from this concept, developing over an itinerary that shows how the artist has interpreted these principles on several levels over the years. Indeed, I find the parallels that Fabre himself draws fascinating when he explains to us that, in a certain sense, both bones and glass share similar functional and protective principles, that they are both resistant and fragile at the same time. Therefore, in those glassy heaps of human bones from which a penis and a vagina respectively emerge, how can we not see the extreme attempt to place us before man’s destiny, so fragile despite his strength, so precariously attached to the earth, so precious in his being
the source of life. A clear and evident message made even more manifest in the Planets I–IX series, an extraordinary demonstration of crafty know-how, with the incredible chiselled details, but also the perfect sublimation of that vital message that passes directly from the corporeal essentiality of the skeleton to the fertilized ovule. Again, the internal sense of being blends with the preciousness of the glass in a constant play of references where these “planets,” alluding to the opening of new worlds, almost seem to suggest that the Glasstress constellation and everything that revolves around it are also part of a true universe in constant expansion. Moreover, while it must be remembered that many famous names from the highest spheres of contemporary art have passed through the Berengo Studio furnace in Murano, such as Thomas Schütte, Tony Cragg, Jaume Plensa, Erwin Wurm and many others, it is above all with Fabre that I have watched metamorphoses, mixtures of the sacred and profane, and manifestations of almost transcendental dreams. And here, with a touch of folly, I have always supported his most ambitious of projects. Therefore, this exhibition is particularly close to my heart, because it is a sort of final accomplishment of my mission in the world of glass and contemporary art. I am proud that Fabre has used my studio for so many years, but above all that, during an event such as the Venice Biennale of Art, a figure of his stature has decided to be represented by a solo exhibition entirely dedicated to his glass creations. There is no doubt that some of the works on display here will go down in history as being among the most important contemporary artistic glass of the twenty-first century. And all this in Venice, the city I have been committed to bringing back into the international limelight for almost thirty years now, to reclaim its position as a centre for excellence in contemporary glass.
The Minds of Helena Troubleyn: Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas, 1990. Photo: Carl De Keyzer. © Troubleyn /
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/ Jan Fabre, 2014 © Stephan Vanfleteren
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE /
For more than thirty-five years Jan Fabre (1958, Antwerp) has been one of the most innovative and important figures on the international contemporary art scene. As a visual artist, theatre artist and author, Fabre reflects in a clear and tangible way on life and death, and physical and social transformations, as well as on the cruel and intelligent depiction of animals and humans. He has created a highly personal world with its own rules and laws, as well as its own characters, symbols, and recurring motifs. He unfolds his universe through his author’s texts and nocturnal notes, published in the volumes of his Night Diary. As a consilience artist, he has merged performance art and theatre. Jan Fabre has changed the idiom of the theatre by bringing real time and real action to the stage. Jan Fabre earned the recognition of a worldwide audience with Tivoli castle (1990) and with permanent public works in sites of historical importance, such as Heaven of Delight (2002) at the Royal Palace in Brussels, The Gaze Within (The Hour Blue) (2011–2013) in the Royal Staircase of the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and his latest installation in the Antwerp Cathedral of The man who bears the cross (2015). He is known for solo exhibitions such as Stigmata. Actions and Performances, 1976–2013 (MAXXI, Rome, 2013). He was the first living artist to present a large-scale exhibition at the Louvre, Paris (L’Ange de la Métamorphose, 2008). The well-known series The Hour Blue (1977–1992) was displayed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (2011). His research on “the sexiest part of the body”, namely the brain, was presented in the solo shows Anthropology of a planet (Palazzo Benzon, Venice, 2007), From the Cellar to the Attic, From the Feet to the Brain (Arsenale Novissimo, Venice, 2009), and PIETAS (Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia, Venice, 2011). The two series of mosaics made with the wing cases of the jewel scarab Tribute to Hieronymus Bosch in Congo (2011–2013) and Tribute to Belgian Congo (2010–2013) travelled in 2016 to ‘s-Hertogenbosch for the 500th anniversary celebration of Hieronymus Bosch. The same year, more than eighty of the artist's works were shown at the exhibition, Jan Fabre. Spiritual Guards at the Forte di Belvedere, Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Jan Fabre has created a major exhibition at The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Knight of Despair / Warrior of Beauty, 2016–2017).
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WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION /
/ Skull with Sugarglider, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Sugarglider, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.7 cm × 25.9 cm × 28.6 cm [pp. 46, 70]
/ Monk (Paris), 2004. Human Bones, Iron Wire, 163.3 cm × 79.1 cm × 49.1 cm. Courtesy of Gallery Daniel Templon, Paris – Brussels [pp. 54, 57]
/ Skull with Squirrel, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Squirrel, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 23.8 cm × 25.2 cm [p. 64]
/ Skull with Parrot, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Parrot, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 22.3 cm × 33.7 cm [pp. 46, 71]
/ Skull with Chameleon, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Chameleon, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 22.3 cm × 28.1 cm [pp. 54, 58]
/ Greek Gods in a Body-Landscape, 2011. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, variable dimensions [pp. 26, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41]
/ Skull with Bat, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Bat, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.9 cm × 22.3 cm × 26.6 cm [pp. 46, 73]
/ Skull with Mole, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Mole, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 54 cm × 22.3 cm × 26.2 cm [pp. 54, 59]
/ I am a one-man movement, 1981. Glass, Bic Ink, 487.3 cm × 35.5 cm × 4.8 cm. Courtesy of Cultural Centre of Belgrade – Collection of the October Salon [pp. 74, 76, 77]
/ Skull with Woodpecker, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Woodpecker, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 24.9 cm × 22.3 cm [pp. 47, 65]
/ Skull with Raven, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Raven, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.9 cm × 35.8 cm × 29.2 cm [pp. 54, 66]
/ The Future Merciful Phallus and Vagina, 2011. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, variable dimensions [pp. 28, 29, 30, 31, 41]
/ Skull with Chinchilla, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Chinchilla, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 52.8 cm × 22.3 cm × 22.3 cm [pp. 50, 75]
/ Skull with Macaw, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Macaw, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53 cm × 31.9 cm × 24 cm [pp. 55, 69, 74]
/ Cross for the Garden of Delight, 2013. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Snake, 71.4 cm × 39.6 cm × 9.2 cm [pp. 32, 33, 41]
/ Skull with Canary, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Canary, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.2 cm × 22.3 cm × 22.3 cm [pp. 51, 75]
/ Skull with Parakeet, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Parakeet, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 54 cm × 22.3 cm × 31.1 cm [p. 60]
/ Monk (Brugges 3003), 2002. Human Bones, Iron Wire, 149 cm × 77.8 cm × 74.2 cm. KUKO private collection, Belgium [pp. 46, 49]
/ Skull with Turaco, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Turaco, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.5 cm × 22.3 cm × 24.8 cm [pp. 52, 74, 84]
/ Skull with Grebe, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Grebe, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 24.7 cm × 26.2 cm [p. 61]
/ Skull with Mouse, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Mouse, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 22.3 cm × 22.7 cm [pp. 46, 67]
/ Skull with Rat, 2017. Murano Glass, Skeleton of a Rat, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 53.6 cm × 22.3 cm × 24.5 cm [pp. 53, 54]
/ Monk (Umbraculum), 2001. Human Bones, Iron Wire, 169.8 cm × 92.3 cm × 66.3 cm. Ali Raif Dinçkök Collection, Istanbul [p. 63]
/ Holy Dung Beetle with Laurel Tree, 2017. Murano Glass, 155 cm × 92 cm × 84 cm [pp. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] / Shitting Doves of Peace and Flying Rats, 2008. Murano Glass, Bic Ink, variable dimensions (Venice 63 Doves) [pp. 18, 19, 20, 21] / The Pacifier, 1977. Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, Wood, 6.8 cm × 6.8 cm × 9.8 cm [pp. 26, 27]
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/ Untitled (Glass Ear), 1988. Glass, Bic Ink, 180 cm × 250 cm [pp. 78, 79, 80] / Untitled (Bone Ear), 1988. Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, 180 cm × 250 cm [pp. 81, 82, 83] / Listen, 1992. Glass, Bic Ink, Human Bones, Plaster, 17.3 cm × 10.1 cm × 13.4 cm [pp. 85, 87] / Planet I–IX, 2011. Murano Glass, Bic Ink, Stainless Steel, 9 objects, each 58 cm × 32 cm [pp. 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93] / The Catacombs of the Dead Street Dogs, 2009-2017. Murano Glass, Skeletons of Dogs, Stainless Steel, variable dimensions [pp. 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103] / Canoe, 1991. Murano Glass, Animal and Human Bones, Bic Ink, Polymeers, 177.5 cm × 638.3 cm × 220 cm [pp. 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109]
/ Double-Edged Axe, 1991. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, Wood, 79.2 cm × 22.5 cm × 3 cm [pp. 104, 110, 111] / Pick-Axe (Large), 1991. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, Wood, 83.4 cm × 21.6 cm × 8.7 cm [pp. 104, 110, 111] / Pick-Axe (Small), 1991. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, Wood, 61 cm × 17.3 cm × 3.1 cm [pp. 104, 110, 111] / Pick, 1991. Murano Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, Wood, 54 cm × 25.3 cm × 3.1 cm [pp. 104, 110, 111] / Da un'altra Faccia del Tempo, 1988. Glass, Human Bones, Bic Ink, 587.2 cm × 66.2 cm × 4.8 cm [pp. 105, 108, 109, 116, 117]
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/ Editorial project: Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy redazione@formaedizioni.it www.formaedizioni.it / Editorial production: Archea Associati / Editorial Director: Laura Andreini / Textual supervision: Riccardo Bruscagli / Editorial staff: Valentina Muscedra Maria Giulia Caliri Beatrice Papucci Ilaria Rondina / Graphic design: Elisa Balducci Vitoria Muzi Isabella Peruzzi Mauro Sampaolesi
/ Editor of the catalogue: Edoardo Cimadori / Photographs: Pat Verbruggen / Translations: Tony Moser Karen Whittle / Proofreading: Karen Tomatis / Photolithography: LAB di Gallotti Giuseppe Fulvio, Florence, Italy / Printing: Cartografica Toscana srl, Pistoia, Italy
© Jan Fabre by SIAE 2017 All works © Angelos bvba Texts © The authors Photographs © Pat Verbruggen
The editor is available to copyright holders for any questions about unidentified iconographic sources. © 2017 Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. First edition: May 2017 ISBN: 978-88-99534-30-1
Venice, Abbazia di San Gregorio 13 May - 26 November 2017
/ Promoted by: GAMeC
/ Graphic design: Archea Associati
/ Supported by: EMST The State Hermitage Museum ANGELOS
/ Art handling and art work installation: WEEXHIBIT Falegnameria Agnoletto
/ Curated by: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio Katerina Koskina Dimitri Ozerkov
ANGELOS Lindsey Daems, Kathy Vercauteren, Margerita Sanders, Lotte Vanhamel
/ Exhibition organization and coordination by: Edoardo Cimadori / Biennale d’Arte di Venezia coordination: Paolo Scibelli / Architectural management: Mario Gemin Studio Gemin Castagna Ottolenghi architetti associati / Staging supervision: Mikes Poppe / Press Office: CLP Relazioni Pubbliche / Art work insurance: Soyer & Mamet
/ Trasport and logistic: Art and Exhibition Services CATIL / Catalogue: Forma Edizioni / We would like to thank: Christine Macel, curator of 57th Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, 2017 Linda and Guy Pieters We would to express our gratitude to the following people who have preciously contributed to the exhibition: Laura Andreini, Alessandro Balan, Senne Claes, Evelien Cox, Lindsey Daems, Sabine de Vijlder, Joanna De Vos, Sarah Dhont, Maika Garnica, Blandine Gwizdala, Martha Maieu, Erin Helsen, Mario Leko, Fien Maris, Margerita Sanders, Mariam Schwahn, Sabine Schollaert, Kato Six, Karen Steegmans, Vincent Surmont, Sammi Van den Heuvel, Lotte Vanhamel, Simon Vanheukelom, Kathy Vercauteren, Mathias Verhoeven, Isabeau Vermassen, Nils Wagemans
Our thanks to all the lenders of the exhibition: Cultural Centre of Belgrade – Collection of the October Salon KUKO private collection, Belgium Gallery Daniel Templon, Paris – Brussels Ali Raif Dinçkök Collection, Istanbul
Special thanks to Linda and Guy Pieters
Melania Rossi
Fabre deploys an art that does not measure history as a product of the present day and, therefore, of sociology, but as the struggle within a metamorphic matter whose memory has dissolved in the depths of time. Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
Fabre crystallizes both bones and glass, and makes them sacral. He sacralises human existence in its mystical, timely presence in reality, driven by imagination. Dimitri Ozerkov
Jan Fabre glass and bone sculptures, or a silent reminder of the brevity of life on earth and our own mortality. Katerina Koskina
There is no doubt that some of the works on display here will go down in history as being among the most important contemporary artistic glass of the twenty-first century. Adriano Berengo
ENG
ISBN 978-88-99534-30-1
JAN FABRE GLASS AND BONE SCULPTURES 1977 - 2017
Jan Fabre represents his idea of completeness and spirituality through hyperfiguration, by stratifying perfectly recognizable elements that come together to form an enigma.