Controcorrente

CONTROCORRENTE is the name of the project born from the collaboration of Forme d'Acqua with architect Simona Favrin and Nicola Moretti, Murano glass master, coming from one of the most historic and important families devoted to glass of the island. It was presented for The Venice Glass Week 2018, the international festival dedicated to the art of glass, inside the group exhibition Murano Glass - Beyond the Barricades, hosted in the Bugno Art Gallery, in the heart of the city. The initiative aims to give a positive connotation and a high artistic value to the concrete anti traffic barriers (called New Jersey) which have become of common use in our cities, and turn them into works of art. 13 Murano glass masters were invited to create 13 different art works, to remember 13 terrorist attacks of the recent past.

In CONTROCORRENTE, colorful glass fishes defy the current, in a tenacious fight against gravity: it is a tribute to resilience, in life above all, and in glass. The work, created by Simona Favrin, is made of Murano glass by the master Nicola Moretti, a great expert in murrino glass and in the glass fusing technique, using the traditional techniques of Murano's artistic glass, revisited in a contemporary key through the experimentation process that always characterizes his work.

The fountain was created by Forme d'Acqua, which reproduced a New Jersey in 1: 1 scale, using stainless steel AISI 316, then polished by hand. The technical compartment placed on the trapezoidal base contains an OASE Aquarius 4000 energy-saving pump for recirculating water. The lighting of the glass elements is made by an opaque, resin-treated LED bars produced in Italy. Thus New Jersey turns into a fountain, the water overflows from above, sliding along the steep and inflexible walls, like fate. The work combines water and Murano glass in a positive message, in contrast with the negative image commonly associated with New Jersey: art therefore as a mean to face our fears, beauty against terror, passion against violence. Murano Glass, so fragile in this historical-cultural moment, yet so strong in its beauty, is chosen as a powerful mean of expression. It tells of the stubborn struggle of the master glassmakers who with tenacity remain on the island of Murano, witnesses of a millenary tradition that preserves part of the most authentic soul of Venice. It becomes the tool to affirm the resilience of man against the overwhelming "gravity" of destiny.