Lucía Vallejo Garay presents her Venetian solo show "Fragilité" at Palazzo Contarini Polignac from September 4 to November 3, 2021. Curated by Nadja Romain, the exhibition takes place in the context of the Venice Glass Week and presents a new series of works by the Spanish artist in dialog with Murano glass and the legacy of Venetian master Giorgione. The show marks the first exploration of glass by the artist and reveals an experimental body of works made of glass and canvas made possible by the expertise of Venetian-based company Laguna B. "When I was doing some research years ago for a dissertation on the authorship of the painting of Christ and the Adulteress I instantly fell in love with Giorgione. It was his soul that captivated me, his introspective, mysterious character. There is something about his paintings, about the gaze of his characters. His colors of course also interest me and are some times reflected in my work. Sometimes consciously and many times unconsciously, they appear in my work. The unconscious is very powerful and engraves colors like the green of his famous painting The Tempest or the oranges and reds of Three Ages of Man." explains Vallejo Garay on her encounter with Giorgione's work.
In her previous exhibitions, Lucía Vallejo has already expressed her concern for the circularity of time that unites life and death. Death is the apotheosis of temporariness and the end of all that exists. In her "Memento Mori" exhibition organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, eleven mummies of anonymous women levitated between heaven and earth, wondering about the mystery of the death of all beings in the universe. This mystery and the fate of the souls of this world are recurrent in her work. The artist's ongoing research on materials led her to choose glass to represent her vision of fragility and eternity, conceptually and not only visually. The result of this research can be seen in "Fragilité" where glass bubbles represent a timeless place where souls – canvases at times intact, at times burned – leave their mark. The souls encapsulated in their new crystal body will see through their transparency and see without being seen, listen without being heard, and wherever they go they will represent the fragility of this life. Here, crystal, a noble and transparent but fragile material, will melt with the canvases with its heat and transform them into ash, leaving a deep imprint in the glass, a trace that will remain forever even when we leave this world. "A matter in-between state, both liquid and solid, that can be heated and transform over and over again" in the words of the curator, Nadja Romain. The production of these mesmerizing sculptures was made possible thanks to Laguna B – a Venice-based company spearheading the revival of Murano as a center of artistic innovation.
