Renato Santarossa 2004
Renato Santarossa lives in Düsseldorf. Renato returned to Guernsey, as our 25th Artist-in-Residence, having launched the IAIRP in 1996. We were delighted to welcome Renato back and he prepared a special glass installation for 'the gallery', as part of his show which ran from 3rd - 16th December 2004
Glass Wall
Pilkington Deutschland
Detail od Santarossa exhibition
'the gallery', Guernsey 1996
Detail of glass installation
Coal Museum, Germany, 2004
Renato Santarossa is an Italian artist, currently based in Düsseldorf, who has been working with glass since the end of the 1960's. His career has taken him all over Europe and to Japan and he is represented in many public collections. As his career developed, Santarossa became particularly involved in realising a number of large public commissions alongside his busy exhibition schedule. He has completed Architectural Projects in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. For each of these he challenges the inherent qualities of glass and confronts the location of this 'fragile' material in public spaces. Often the work is combined with water which heightens the luminosity, transparency and reflection of his vitreous material. A very successful partnership, in the 1990's, with a leading glass manufacturer in Germany led to a increased use of colour in laminated glass, just as it was being developed, and Santarossa continues to embrace manufacturing developments. Recently he has completed an outside installation, as part of his exhibition at the Coal Museum in Germany, which combines waves of sheet glass supported horizonatally within a black sea of coal. A line of red glows along the uppermost crest of each 'wave'
In 1996 Renato Santarossa launched the International Artist in Residence Programme and as part of this inaugural exhibition in 'the gallery', entitled Light, Shadow, Transparency, he worked on a site-specific installation which combined the grey granite of Guernsey with a curved sheet of dicroytic glass directly attached to the wall. Two granite pillars supported some 2m high columns of etched glass and became a doorway which framed the rising blue arc beyond. In Santarossa's work, entitled Impression of Island, found materials, carved at a local workshop, combined with cutting edge technology
It was therefore particularly exciting that Santarossa returned to Guernsey, and Grange House, and joined us, once again,red bottom shoes for our celebratory twenty-fifth residency. We were delighted to welcome Renato back to Art & Design he was in Guernsey from the beginning of November until the 4th December 2004.
Joanna Littlejohns
Curator of the International Artist in Residence Programme