A LUMINOUS PATH IN 4 UNIQUE VENETIAN LOCATIONS

Venice offers endless options to highlight the beauty of art and design. A different and by all means luminous path, spreading from the western to the eastern sides of the town, took place in four unique locations during the 12th edition of Venice Design Week.

Choosing a different orientation compared to other similar events, VDW has chosen a strategy to promote the art of design: through dedicated paths. The one focused on lights and illuminations brightened four iconic Venetian locations:

The Baglioni hotel Luna, behind San Marco Square,
The Ca’ Nigra Lagoon Resort near the Santa Lucia Central Station,
the Franchetti Gallery inside the Ca’ D’Oro museum,
the Sant’Eufemia Gallery on the island of Giudecca, Venice art district.

Chosen installations and designs for these exhibitions were:

STUDIO DI_ARCHON, INSULA_dei LUMINARI Installation at Ca’ D’Oro’s Galleria Franchetti
SELÈNE ILLUMINAZIONI, SOGNI DI VETRO installation at Ca Nigra Lagoon Resort
ROMANI SACCANI ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI, APPUNTI DI VETRO installation at Baglioni Hotel Luna
LORIS FAGARAZ, NEURODIVERGENT ANGEL installation at Sant’Eufemia Gallery

Use our table of content to discover more about the “path of light” in the heart of Venice.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Luminous path step 1: SOGNI DI VETRO (Glass Dreams)
Luminous path step 2: APPUNTI DI VETRO (Glass Notes)
Luminous path step 3: NEURODIVERGENT ANGEL
Luminous path step 4: INSULA dei LUMINARI
USEFUL LINKS

Luminous path step 1: SOGNI DI VETRO (GLASS DREAMS)

Selène Illuminazione is a brand that since 1969 commits daily to design light objects that create emotions. It’s inspired by the peculiar Venetian glass tradition, and it is a typical Italian family business.

“Light is energy and synergy, not just a means to distinguish forms. Light creates spaces”.

From this statement, they create functional lights that are based on the special relation between the object and its interaction with different materials, with a meticulous and typically Italian care for details. Love and consistence are the core values that give meaning to every creation.

The perception of reality is unique for each person, and so the lights offer a special solution that reflects the feeling towards the ambients where the lights will be used.

Glass dreams is the installation that took place in the noble rooms of Ca’Nigra Lagoon Resort, where different lights blended with the elegant elements that decorate the hotel.

Mixing modern and contemporary style with the noble home, they brought a new dimension to the existing decor from the Eighteenth century.

Pictures credit: Giorgia Chinellato

Luminous path step 2: APPUNTI DI VETRO (GLASS NOTES)

Installation by the design studio Romani Saccani Architetti Associati, founded in 1999 by architects Michele Romani and Mauro Saccani, and Multiforme manufacturer, born in 2009 within the international panorama of decorative lighting, custom, and bespoke works. Glass Notes was the exhibition displayed at the ground floor of the Baglioni Hotel Luna, a collection of table lamps with a profile that vaguely reminds of a stylised tree, Forest, table lamps by Multiforme.

Pictures by Flora MC

The base recalls cylindrical trunks and the cone glass on top bears similitudes with the crown of a plant. The peculiarity of this work is in the production: the cycle happens entirely within the company. Specifically, on these lamps, the fact that the glass rests on bases cuts on increasing levels, allowed for more variations, creating different profiles and more or less slender shapes.

Pictures credit: Alice Men

The result is a set of elegant and delicate contrasts that sets mood of relax and tranquillity. The hall at the Baglioni Hotel Luna added sophistication to this exhibition, where the difference nuances melted beautifully with the background.

Luminous path step 3: NEURODIVERGENT ANGEL

Neurodivergent Angel is a beautiful interactive work by Loris Fagaraz, expert in lighting engineering in residential and commercial environments.

Loris creates light boxes that reflect his visionary and conceptual artistry, and he is inspired by Art Deco, Dadaism, Futurism, Pop Art, and everything in between.

Immensely loved by the visitors at the Sant’Eufemia Gallery, neurodivergent angel is an interactive light in the shape of angels’ wings, that hangs statically on the wall, but that is fired by colourful lights that can be individually changed and modified thanks to a remote control. The contradiction of fixed wing and customisable light is intentional, and represents the sociological dialectic between centrifugal internal forces and the external ones. E. Durkheim’s philosophy inspired this work.

A LUMINOUS PATH IN 4 UNIQUE VENETIAN LOCATIONS 20 — *Picture by flora mc*

Luminous path step 4: INSULA_DEI LUMINARI

Located in one of the most prestigious buildings in Venice, when not in the whole Italy, Franchetti Gallery hosts the art collection of baron Giorgio Franchetti, that he donated to the Italian state, and that include furnitures, medals, paintings sculptures and more.

The installation Insula_Dei Luminari, presented in this gallery, is born from the never-ending research around the impartiality between space and time. It’s an experimental work that tries to use lights and shadows, actions, sounds, and words, to answer to this impartiality.

The work is completed by an aired flute piece by Jakub Kydlíček Lucente Stella [Shining Star – ed] and a text by Isidora Tesic, a young poet and a talented writer.

The space occupied by the lights allows to ask spatial questions that have multiple answers and the use of light is inclusive: it aims to invite the viewers to imagine it in different locations.

Architects Stevan Tesic and Milena Veljkovic build projects where art, design, and architecture coexist on two plans: one is the Mittel-European connected to Beograd, the other is rooted in Milan, Italy.

Pictures credit: Fabio Bressanello

Three lights animate the Luminari, each with a name:

Luce a Terra_Del Poggiare,

Luce sul Volto_del Vedere

Luce da pozzo metaforico_ del Riconoscersi

[Floor light_of sitting, Face light_of seeing, and light from metaphorical well_of recognising each other – ed]

Ca’ D’Oro installation patrons are A.L.M.A.G. AZIENDA LAVORAZIONI METALLURGICHE E AFFINI GNUTTI, E.M.C. COLOSIO, ISENS Custom Life Technologies, LINEARSTONE, MIS Magli Intermodal Service. Technical partners: RUBELLI SPA – STEREO BOX s.r.l.