In Veneto,they say the month of February is short and bitter but in Venice,as the snowflakes swirl , works of Alessandro ,a metal sculptor whose tiny atelier in San Polo is full of light and imagination.
Its a Calvino-esque world of moons and whales that oscillate in starlit spaces. Lampshades in naturalistic forms and branches of trees with glowing light eggs.
You can even but a sigil in Renaissance style to imprint on the wax to send a letter to send to
www.mano.it
Shibori silk with moulded glass for Biosfera exhibition 2006. Photo Alvise Guardagnano
Another contempoaray emerging artist who uses the light and reflections of Venice is photographer Alvise Guardagnano .His formative years were spent literaly above the studio of Tintorettoin Canereggio revealing itself in his use of refections,mirages and optical illusions .
Tintorettos miraculous rendition of light and dark in his fescoes still inspires us
who, many centuries later ,use light boxes instead of pens and paint -both illusionists of light and dark..
Venice has many frescoes of Tinteretto but my favourite is at the Chiesa Madonna del Orto, a dark brooding flurry of tangled figures reminding us of universal esxistential themes , in that ebbing and flowing struggle between light and darkness under the sceptre of eternity...
