Lorenzo Passi and Impossibility of Fulfillment

Lorenzo Passi is an artist who glorifies nature through his splendiferous artwork. Born in Milan and trained in Bologna, he decided to move to Venice at the age of 20 to begin his apprenticeship in the world of artistic glass at the historical Archimede Seguso and Zanetti Vetreria Artistica. He further perfected the skill of vitreous artifacts in Nuutajärvi, ​​Finland, where Lorenzo began to combine blown glass with heterogeneous materials, such as metal and wood, that today characterize Passi’s creative poetics.

The artist, who is newly based in La Serenissima, currently works at the Wave Murano Glass in Murano, and has distinguished himself for his multi sensory series “Flore e Faune” (2017).

During Venice’s Glass Week, that takes place 9-16 September, Lorenzo Passi’s work focuses on the search for identity. The desire to take root and plant the foundations of our soul in a place where one can feel free to identify oneself, is the lyrical message conveyed by Passi’s latest creations.

Transfigured by the insane swift changes of life, the human being battles against time in the hope of achieving stability. Man strives on a daily basis to keep grounded through life and hold on to certainties. What should be a cornerstone in a frail and vulnerable world, yearns for something definite to cling on to. Roots thus become the element in nature that provide the support that man tries so eagerly to grasp. They are the nourishers of trees, nature and the Earth itself. A world that is inclined to fall apart, is kept together by roots.

Hence, Lorenzo Passi focuses his dialectic of artistic meaning around the impossibility of the individual to feel fulfilled, in an existential condition that lacks the security and identification. In this work he picks up the root of a felled tree coming from an area known to the artist and in which his ancestors lived. He uses it as a mold to create a series of cubic modules of various nuances that, once they are arranged, will create the negative of the stock; then, through the light, Passi projects the image of the plant or what is left of it on the ground.

This creation begins with the initial faith and trust of the plant that gets broken down — as the allegory of the fragmented colors attests. The shrub eventually  recomposes through light — a glaring metaphor of the illusion of existence.