Dear Shaded Viewers,
The artist and sculptor, Antoine Pierini, was invited to exhibit his blown glass masterpieces in The Villa Kérylos from May 8th to September 18th.
Photos by Ilan Dehe
Imagine growing up in a family of artists and watching the magic of glass blowing from childhood. It is no wonder that at the age of six the artist and sculpture, Antoine Pierini, created his first work of art. All be it, little glass pebbles. Pierini is a self admitted dreamer, he was dreaming as a child and as an adult he creates and lives his dreams. His passion for the art of glassblowing has only grown with time. Pierini learned techniques and the gestures of glassblowing by observing his father and travelling with him visiting exhibitions. Through observation and practice he mastered the art of working with the molten material.
As an artist he’s done residencies around the world and encountered the greatest names in glass. His father was a pioneer in the “Studio Glass Mouvement” in France in addition his aunt and uncle and cousin are among the most famous French glassmakers. As an heir to the knowledge of his father, he carves his own path as a sculpture creating work that is as well suited for the interior as the exterior. Some of the work currently on exhibit at the Villa Kérylos was made specifically for the Villa. His amphorae, made of coloured glass, whole or fragmented, cohabit at the Villa Kérylos with ancient amphorae, covered with thousand-year-old concretions and witnesses of shipwrecks on a sea that remained untamed.
The roots of his work lie in Mediterranean antiquity, but the focus remains on modernity. In the midst of the works and the visual and sound installations, Homer sings to the visitor’s ear the destinies of men, while the words of Albert Camus, describing his stay in Athens “as a single source of light that I will be able to keep in the heart of my life”, resonate in each glass work.
The work of Antoine Pierini is an invitation to travel with him to the Mediterranean and to dream. In the end what you have before you is the merging of antiquity and modernity and as you watch the light reflecting through the sculpture you too are put to dream.
The poet Kostantin Cavafy is quoted as saying “”May the journey be long, may there be many summer mornings, when (with what delight!) you will enter ports seen for the first time”. Antoine Pierini invites you to that journey at Villa Kerylos.
The exhibition “Dreaming of the Mediterranean” goes until September 18th but could be extended.
Later,
Diane
