IL GIRO DEL MONDO NELLE SCULTURE IN VETRO DI MURANO DI JULIEN FRIEDLER

AROUND THE WORLD IN MURANO GLASS SCULPTURES BY JULIEN FRIEDLER

Painting, writing, performance with Schnarks that populate his atelier in Brussels, first of all Jack Balance , protagonist of the installation Les Innocents .

Julien Friedler over the years he has proven to be an artist capable of investigating his inner world by experimenting with various forms of expression and exploring different disciplines, including literature and philosophy, psychoanalysis and sociology, up to the plastic arts. His is a heterogeneous production, which feeds on the many vital stimuli gathered over years of study, travel and a genuine desire to get to know other cultures.

An example of this approach is the three Murano glass cups that Friedler made between 2010 and 2011 ( Coupe Américaine , Coupe Africaine – 2010/2011, Redemption of the artist – 2010).

“What the artist tells us – explains the curator Dominique Stella – it is a legendary world: painting, installation, his Murano glass sculptures belong to an epic form, a luxuriant expression, generated by an explosive gesture of matter and colour. Lights, sequins, yellow and red hues, flows of material that slide like lava. It is a firework that Friedler offers us in exemplary excess”.

These three works want to tell the world travels of Jack Balance , that frustrated clown who asks himself existential questions who represents the artist's alter ego. Traveling the length and breadth of the planet in a mystical quest, Jack discovers South America and Africa. His is a journey that has a strong symbolic value: it represents the exploration of the human soul in its atavistic and universal complexity.

Jack Balance embodies the Consciousness ( Rédemption de l'artiste ); symbolizes the struggle that man sustains to exist, in the terrible dependence on his Creator" says Dominique Stella.

The sculptures were created in collaboration with the Murano master Lucius Bubacco . A lover of classical, Greco-Roman and Byzantine art, Bubacco specialized in lampworking glass and in the creation of subjects – including angels, demons, gods, satyrs and nymphs – entirely shaped by hand and included in blown glass or in mergers. Precisely this world of subjects suspended between the otherworldly and the fantastic is the point of contact with Friedler's art, which has always been immersed in a dreamlike dimension.

For those who have not yet been able to visit a Friedler exhibition, the opportunity to see his works again in Italy returns in the spring of 2022. Follow us on our social channels @cdstudiodarte and IG @cdstudiodarte68 , we will keep you updated!

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