Glasstress Special Project,
Big Bambú
Official Collateral Exhibition to the 54th Venice Biennale
The first exhibit of the Big Bambú series was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY last year, it ranked 4th in total attendance of a contemporary art exhibition internationally and the 9th highest attended exhibit in the entire history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The central aspect of the ongoing sculpture in Venice is a 50' tall hollow tower of bamboo, with a trail spiraling up to the top reaching a 20' wide roof top lounge/Altana (there will be limited access). The Starns and their crew of rock climbers will continue to lash together bamboo, sustaining the spiral upward until the closing day of the sculpture, June 15th.
As Big Bambú is about the continual evolution of living things, in addition to 2,000 fresh poles harvested from a farm in France, Doug and Mike have cut several of the Fragments out of the Metropolitan installation. The Starns: "We are grafting a new Big Bambú and using 1,000 poles from the Met as stem cells, the Venice piece will still be the Metropolitan piece but also a new one, Big Bambú is always growing and changing and becoming something new-- as we all are."
The Starns' Venice location is the former United States Consulate and is next door to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal. This is the first time it has been used as a location for a collateral exhibition since the famous triumph of American art in 1964 as the Annex to the American Pavilion when Robert Rauschenberg won the Grand Prize. It is currently the home of the Venice campus of Wake Forest University.
The installation is of short duration, viewing from
May 29th through June 15th, 10AM - 7PM.
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Doug and Mike would love for you for you to know about a project of two of the Climbers:
When Steve Brown and Colleen O'Brien aren't building on Big Bambu they are filming
ironworkers climbing steel and building skyscrapers. Help them reach their goal on kickstarter
by donating to their documentary film entitled Cowboys of the Sky.
  
  
  
  
  
   
day one and day
Unloading the the last 500 poles of 2600 total in the piece here in Venice
  
  
IN THE PRESS
The New York Times, June 3, 2011
VOGUE'S Guide to the 54th Venice Biennale
ARTINFO, June 1, 2011
The New York Times, Art Beat, May 31, 2011
Guardian.co.uk, June 11, 2011
The New York Times, Abstract Sunday, June 2, 2011
Contessanally, June 27, 2011
laBiennaleTV, July 4, 2011
Bloomberg, June, 2011
Poughkeepsie Journal, June 22, 2011
Gooooodt, June 17, 2011
Huffpost Art, June 16, 2011
Mixingreality, June 15, 2011
Spread Artculture, June 11, 2011
Poughkeepsie Journal, June 10, 2011
SQUARE, June 6, 2011
Designboom, June, 2011
The Art Newspaper, June 11, 2011
Artdaily, June 8, 2011
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> To sign up for the Big Bambú electronic newsletter, please email:
bb@starnstudio.com with SUBSCRIBE in the subjectline
.
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Big Bambú in Venice is created from 2,000 fresh poles harvested from this beautiful farm in France, along with 1,000 poles and several Fragments cut out of the Metropolitan installation, from these we are grafting the new Big Bambu. Doug and Mike Starn would like to thank
La Bambouseraie and Les Pépinières de la Boubouseraie for their support in kind of the project in Venice.
 p roject in
Additional support for travel provided by ALTOUR.
 nice.
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