VENICE.- Lucía Vallejo Garay presents her Venetian solo show "Fragilité" at Magazzino Gallery at Palazzo Contarini Polignac from September 4 to October 30, 2021.

Curated by Nadja Romain, the exhibition takes place in the context of the Venice Glass Week and presents a new series of works by the Spanish artist in dialog with Murano glass and the legacy of Venetian master Giorgione. The show marks Vallejo's first exploration of glass and reveals an experimental body of works made of glass and canvas made possible by the expertise of Venetian-based company LagunaB.

"When I was doing some research years ago for a dissertation on the authorship of the painting of Christ and the Adulteress I instantly fell in love with Giorgione. It was his soul that captivated me, his introspective, mysterious character. There is something about his paintings, about the gaze of his characters. His colors of course also interest me and are some times reflected in my work. Sometimes consciously and many times unconsciously, they appear in my work. The unconscious is very powerful and engraves colors like the green of his famous painting The Tempest or the oranges and reds of Three Ages of Man." explains Vallejo Garay on her encounter with Giorgione’s work.

In her previous exhibitions, Lucia Vallejo has already expressed her concern for the circularity of time that unites life and death. Death is the apotheosis of temporariness and the end of all that exists. Her ongoing research on materials led her to choose glass to represent her vision of fragility and eternity, conceptually and not only visually. The result of this research can be seen in "Fragilité" where glass bubbles represent a timeless place where souls – canvases at times intact, at times burned – leave their mark.

The artist's ongoing research on materials led her to choose glass to represent her vision of fragility and eternity, conceptually and not only visually. The result of this research can be seen in "Fragilité" where glass bubbles represent a timeless place where souls – canvases at times intact, at times burned – leave their mark.

«”Fragilité" is the result of a year of Lucia Vallejo’s experimentation with glass. Her first exploration with glass. For an artist so used to engage physically with her medium, (canvas and paint) not to be able to touch the work, leaving it in the hand of the maestro, not being able to control the outcome: it’s disturbing. It means experiencing the letting go. The works that can be seen in the show are the result of a long and complex process. It started by chance during a conversation in Menorca, where Lucia and I met, and continued in Venice where Lucia traveled regularly to work with LagunaB and me, often during lockdown periods. Time was like suspended in a rather empty Venice. There was a kind of magic that is translated in the pieces. And an opportunity for Lucia to discover the lagoon, the fragility of its ecosystems, and the vulnerability of Venice. Lucia has created something that resembles nothing I saw before: these canvas and glass pieces. Fragility, the destiny of human beings, and the soul are at the core of Lucia’s practice. Working with glass in Venice brings a new dimension to her work. The city serves as a metaphor for the tragic aspect of human destiny. Venice is like: how can a place like this exists, beyond its “fragilité”?» explains the curator, Nadja Romain.




The souls encapsulated in their new crystal body will see through their transparency and see without being seen, listen without being heard, and wherever they go they will represent the fragility of this life.

Here, crystal, a noble and transparent but fragile material, will melt with the canvases with its heat and transform them into ash, leaving a deep imprint in the glass, a trace that will remain forever even when we leave this world. “A matter in-between state, both liquid and solid, that can be heated and transform over and over again” in the words of the curator, Nadja Romain.

The production of these mesmerizing sculptures was made possible thanks to LagunaB – a Venice-based company spearheading the revival of Murano as a center of artistic innovation – under the supervision of Alvise Maria de Mezzo whose expertise in glass production was instrumental in experimenting the new techniques that allowed the making of the works.

Lucía Vallejo Garay was born in Bilbao in 1975, she is a sculptor and an art historian.

Her artworks are exhibited in galleries and international art fairs like ARCO, Art Cologne or Pulse New York, ZONAMACO, among others. She has worked with major art galleris for a decade, and with Distrito4 in Madrid. She is currently represented by Proyecto Hin Mexico.

Her work is related to the decomposition movement in painting, it expands and liberates the linen's materiality recovering this fabric's expressive potential. Painting loses its two-dimensional condition to become a 3D object. The next step in her career is represented by installations. Her exhibition in Casal Solleric was a turning point in her career due to the fact that her artwork became more complex as she started to produce pieces for public spaces. The 2017 exhibition held in Tabacalera Promocion de Arte represents her most mature work up to date, and also signifies the growing importance of the female figure in her inspiration.

Outside of Spain, she had several solo shows like “E as veias correm ...”, at the Medeiros e Almeida Museum (Lisbon), and in the Soares dos Reis National Museum (Porto); "Splendor et annuntiatio: no palace has silêncio", at the Palace das Artes (Porto), and in 2021 her solo show "Memento Mori" at Ca n'Oliver, Menorca. Collective shows include her participation to the Eugenio de Almeida Foundation (Évora) and "Vitrea" at the Milan Triennial, curated by Jean Blanchaert.

Since its inception, her works have been displayed into numerous relevant international collections, public and private such as Fundacíon Coca-Cola, Coleccíon Lilly Scarpetta, etc. In 2018 her artworks were displayed in Oporto's Arts Palace as part of an individual exhibition titled "Splendor et Annuntiatio: no palacio ha silencio” D3 curated by María de Fátima Lambert. In 2019, she participated to a collective exhibition at San Telmo Museum (San Sebastían), Fundagao Eugenio de Almeida (Evora), and had a solo exhibition in Lazaro Galdiano Museum (Madrid).