'Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists' will be open through December 17th, 2017.
Today, many workshops still operate through generations of apprenticeship and hand-blown production methods that have changed little over centuries. Traditionally, young apprentices could begin learning the craft as children, spending years mastering the precision, endurance, and physical rhythm required to become true Murano glassblowers.
Founded by Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga, Giberto Venezia approaches Murano glass less as luxury object and more as cultural preservation. Raised inside Venice’s Palazzo Papadopoli surrounded by Tiepolo frescoes, antique objects, and the atmosphere of the city itself, Giberto channels that distinctly Venetian sense of beauty into handblown glasses, decanters, mirrors, and sculptural home objects produced in collaboration with Murano artisans. Though not a glassblower himself, his practice is built through close dialogue with the island’s master craftsmen, preserving techniques that remain deeply tied to Venice’s identity. The project has also become generational: his daughters, including Vera Arrivabene, have helped carry forward the family’s broader creative universe rooted in Venetian craftsmanship, design, and tradition.
Visual harmony is when everything lines up, colors dance together, shadows carve depth; it’s a fleeting moment in which everything sits perfect for a second. A phenomenon Meyerowitz was true in chasing; moments he describes as “nearly invisible” because of their transience. His hunt for harmony leads his lens to near and far. In the inertia of 1960s New York streets, these moments are much hard to come by but so alluring when witnessed, and Meyerowitz preserves it to be seen by all. Shifting his camera's gaze from the velocity and energy within NYC to a slower scenery in the 1970s. In the open horizons, undisturbed by honking horns and masses of animated characters, color and form become the main subjects.
Meyerowitz is driven by a Robert Frost quote from The Figure of a Poem: 'No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew.' He spots the near invisible surprises in the habitual routines of life. During a time when color in photography was considered aesthetically limiting and technically inferior, reserved for advertisements and holiday cards, Meyerowitz showed how color invites a whole new layer of emotional and visual depth. Color is what the world knows, but when orchestrated so thoughtfully, it illustrates a world like ours but rich in dreaminess, vividity, and whimsy.
The exhibit will run June 5th-July 11th at 3-5 Swallow Street, London.
Digitally carved from 3D scans, the hands and feet are modeled from the artist Yaz Exall's own body, while the lower form references an imprint taken from the artist’s childhood best friend, preserving even the impression of a thong. Exaggerated hemispherical breasts rendered in a cubist style further distort the figure, pointing toward cosmetic idealization and the increasing artificiality of bodily perfection. Through its title, Dividend positions femininity as something exchanged, consumed, altered, and assigned value tracing the uneasy intersection of intimacy, violence, labor, and desire.
