中 En
Loretta Yang, hailed as a pioneer of Asian glass art. In the 1980s, she was an important film performance artist in Asia, winning the highest honors in the Asian film industry—the Golden Horse Awards and the Asia-Pacific Film Festival—on multiple occasions. Continuing her accumulation in performing arts and keen observation, Loretta Yang turned to modern glass art in 1987, establishing the "Glass Workshop" and the Glass Art Museum. From exploration and experimentation to highly praised works, with breakthroughs in the "glass lost-wax casting technique" and rich Chinese humanistic and philosophical thoughts, she has once again brought Chinese glass art to shine on the international stage after a millennium of obscurity. Loretta Yang's works have been collected by renowned museums and art galleries worldwide and have been invited to teach at important international museums, earning her global acclaim in the glass art community.
In September 2024, artist Loretta Yang's glass art piece "Bloom of a New World" was invited to be exhibited in Venice, Italy, at the internationally renowned biennial exhibition Homo Faber 2024. This exhibition brings together over 400 international master craftsmen from more than 50 countries and regions, showcasing their extraordinary masterpieces. Through the works of talented artists from around the world, it leads every viewer on a journey to examine human life through the lens of craftsmanship.
The term Homo Faber was first widely used during the Renaissance to praise the infinite creativity of humanity. The exhibition will present all aspects of exquisite craftsmanship under the sole guiding principle that "humans are superior to machines."
The exhibition organizer, the Michelangelo Foundation, has always adhered to the artistic foresight of creativity and craftsmanship. In the present era of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence technology, this sincerity seems even more touching. We embrace new technologies, but we never forget our roots.
Glass Lost-Wax Casting
The Ultimate Pursuit of Craftsmanship
The creation of "Bloom of a New World" is an enhancement of the lost-wax casting technique, specifically in the area of pink firing and color fixation, by artist Loretta Yang, reviving a technique that is over 2000 years old. British scholar Keith Cummings said, "In Loretta Yang's works, the exploration of the impermanence of life through glass and light gives her works a humanistic quality and complexity, making them one of the highest forms of representation of Asian glass."
How can transparent glass bloom into brilliant colors? The work uses red and transparent glass powder, filled into engraved plaster molds, with glass powder ground into sand by hand, placed in different proportions in different positions according to the imagined space, and then fired in a kiln; the color of the flowers is brilliant and clear, and finally merged with transparent glass in the kiln for remelting. The completion of the work is repeatedly fired in the yin and yang molds. The larger the size, the greater the difficulty, and the corresponding failure rate increases exponentially. The "Bloom of a New World" work reaches a height of 65 centimeters, and the artist not only fully considers the natural shape but also determines the connection positions in advance, and needs to accurately master every detail of the entire process. Ultimately, the completed work presents a huge glass flower blooming in a transparent and clear world, giving a flower the highest tribute to life with glass.
Glass, like canvas,
Colors, at will,
This is Loretta Yang's dream;
Lilies are elegant and selfless, irises are passionate in purple-red,
orchids are elegant in light green,
Bloom after bloom of glass flowers,
Upon closer inspection, the colors of the flowers are so passionate,
In the veins, like blood harboring life.