iMuseo del Vetro (Murano Glass Museum)Murano
BABEL - Marco Toso Borella
About twenty new works by Murano artist Marco Toso Borella, scratched into gold leaf on glass, on incommunicability in an age of social media and AI.
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On one gold panel, a chessboard holds a social-media knight, an art critic selling smoke, a talking cricket and Maurizio Cattelan's banana, taped down. Marco Toso Borella scratched all of it into 24-carat gold leaf with a needle, working a square centimetre at a time for weeks.
BABEL is about twenty new works on one theme: people failing to talk to each other in an age of social media and AI. The technique is old Murano: gold leaf engraved by hand, layered between sheets of glass, painted at several depths and fired, so the figures sit in 3D. Fittingly for the subject, Toso Borella's other job is getting 300 Venetians to sing together, as director of the Big Vocal Orchestra.
You'll need to stand close: My Fair Venice compares the panels to Bosch, where the tiny detail runs the whole picture. The show is in the Sala Brandolini and comes with the regular museum ticket (€15, €7.50 reduced).
Editor's pick
Cattelan's taped banana lies on a chessboard engraved by needle into 24-carat gold leaf. Marco Toso Borella's twenty or so panels take on social media and AI, and My Fair Venice compares their detail to Bosch. Stand close.
Look for
Anghiari
Look for the 170 by 70 cm panel after Leonardo's lost Battle of Anghiari, its warriors joined by smartphones, drones, social-network symbols, the Tower of Babel and the Twin Towers.
The chessboard
A social-media knight, a smoke-selling art critic and a talking cricket move across the squares, with Cattelan's taped banana on the floor.
Don Quixote on a bicycle
He rides out against the anxiety of appearances, fake news and the 'tribunal of hearts', where the more likes you get, the more you are worth.
The radio frames
The frames carry the antennas and knobs of old radios, a hint, says My Fair Venice, to change the channel.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You came to Murano for blown glass: these are flat engraved gold-leaf panels, closer to pictures.
Also at Museo del Vetro (Murano Glass Museum)
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- BABEL - Marco Toso BorellaCourtesy of Museo del Vetro (Murano Glass Museum)
- The Silks of Lucio AndrichCourtesy of Palazzo Mocenigo – Museum of Textiles and Costume
- Venice Pavilion: Note PersistentiCourtesy of La Biennale di Venezia (Giardini & Arsenale)
- Erwin Wurm. DreamersPhoto Markus Gradwohl
- Museo del Vetro (Murano Glass Museum)Sailko / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0