Moments of Happiness in Venice

The 58^th Art Biennale in Venice opened the Dysfunctional exhibition on May 8^th in the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at CA’ d’Oro. Among the 21 works by artists from the Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Piaget has collaborated with the Verhoeven twins to produce an extremely particular and evocative sculpture. Called “Moments of Happiness”, the work is a series of soap bubbles made of borosilicate glass which, as if by magic, create the illusion of having stopped time. The Verhoeven Twins have managed to transform the symbolic image of brevity into a durable object, capturing, just like a snapshot, youthful innocence and the playful spirit of bubble-blowing. For the first time, the artists decided to incorporate gold into their work, thus paying homage to Piaget’s savoir faire in the art of working this precious metal. The way in which the bubbles were created took years of research: borosilicate glass is the most stable and transparent glass that man can produce and Italian craftsmen, used to working on jewelry, were able to precision cut the glass to compose a complex and exceptionally solid structure. The sculpture, on display until 24^th November, has been placed in one of the beautiful halls in Ca d’Oro, overlooking the Grand Canal. The building’s name comes from the fact that some parts of the façade were originally covered in gold with polychrome decorations. An ideal location for this union between art and design that fits perfectly into the luxurious context of Venetian heritage.

Verhoeven Twins
Jeroen and Joep Verhoeven are Dutch artists who live and work in Amsterdam. Their work combines fantasy with practicality. It is function and form transformed into mystic narrative, where delicate and dreamy images become objects that can be seen, touched and, above all, used in everyday life. Their works can be admired in several public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and have recently been acquired by The Corning Museum of Glass in New York.