Jan Fabre’s "Pietas" (View this photo) has been unanimously considered as one of the most controversial pieces exhibited in Venice during the local Art Biennale (at the Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia, until 16th October 2011).
I found Fabre's new work rather interesting for its symbolism, but when I visited the installation I was more attracted by these fascinating (and disturbing as we will discover in a short while…) “nests” that decorated the columns of the building rather than by the main marble pieces.
If you know the work of Flemish artist Jan Fabre you may remember that the, well, rather unusual material used for these nests also reappeared in other works such as "Heaven of Delight", "Skull with Budgerigar" or "I had to demolish a part of the ceiling of the Royal Palace because there was something growing out of it" that is currently part of the "Hortus/Corpus" exhibition at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterloo, The Netherlands (until 4th September).
This intriguing material characterised by quite beautiful iridescent nuances is actually the carapace of an insect. Fabre employed indeed thousands of shells from the Buprestidae beetle, also known as jewel beetle for its amazing colours, and glued them together to create the different forms and patterns for his works.
The colours, nuances and textures of the beetle shields are absolutely fascinating, though it's easy to feel slightly disturbed in front of these pieces when they hear where the main material to make them came from (it must be said that the material perfectly fits with the main themes Fabre deals with including the transience of life, eternity and extreme beauty).
When I first saw the nests I decided to take a picture straightaway since I thought that those nuances could have been extremely interesting for fashion inspirations.
The colours of Fabre’s nests came back to mind when I saw images of a specific iridescent dress from Nhu Duong’s Spring/Summer 2012 collection recently presented at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockhom Fashion Week.
In a previous post I mentioned how the iridescent effects of Morphotex fabric are recreated using nanotechnology that allows to copy the nano-scale structure of the cobalt-blue wings of the morpho-butterfly.
The gleaming metallic iridescence of the beetles from the Buprestidae family is due to the microscopic texture in their cuticle that selectively reflects specific frequencies of light in particular directions. I guess it would be amazing to see if technology could somehow be employed to recreate the same effects of colours of the Brupestidae beetle on fabric, don't you think so?
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