Temptation, Glasstress, Boca Raton 2025, 3rd Edition, Florida (USA) 24 Apr - 12 Oct 2025

The Boca Raton Museum of Art features artworks by Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen in its exhibition ‘Glasstress Boca Raton 2025’. On view in the group exhibition organized by Fondazione Berengo, are four of Vanmechelen’s marble with glass sculptures; three Temptations and Cosmopolitan Fossil - marking a continuation of his use of glass in the Glasstress project. The works have been on show before as part of Vanmechelen prestigious solo exhibition at the Uffizi in Florence in 2022, and can now be discovered in Florida until October 12th.

Glass as medium

Returning for its third season in Boca Raton, Glasstress explores the creative possibilities of glass as an artistic medium. The exhibition brings together celebrated contemporary artists—many of whom have never worked in the medium before—with master glassmakers from Berengo Studio in Murano to push the boundaries of a glassblowing tradition dating back over 700 years.

Cosmopolitan Fossil, Temptation

Through Koen Vanmechelen’s Cosmopolitan Renaissance philosophy he initiates dialogue with the old masters. As W.H. Auden said in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts “About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood its human position, how it takes place.” Suffering and struggle lie at the heart of human existence; central forces that Vanmechelen captures through his sculptures in glass and marble. This tension materializes in Cosmopolitan Fossil; a child struggling with a chicken, and in the hybrid Temptation busts. They symbolize the explosion, the dawn of a new world in which we must find new ways to live together.

Cosmopolitan Fossil, like the 19th-century plaster cast by Adriano Cecioni from the collection of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in the Pitti Palace, shows a child holding his arms around a creature that he evidently cannot keep under control. Vanmechelen transforms the creature into a hybrid to represent the eternal confrontation between human and animal taken to the extreme of its emotional tension. Suddenly, the irritated child realises that nature, irretrievably, escapes his grasp. The use of glass reinforces this narrative, being highly fragile; a balance that risks breaking at any moment, to the detriment of the child, or Nature.

Moreover, a selection of Vanmechelen’s sculptures from the Temptation series are on show, inspired by collections of ancient statuary from the Uffizi. These sculptures depict emperors, philosophers, warriors, heroes, gods but also ordinary men and women sculpted in white Statuario marble. They represent humanity travelling and discovering, either physically or through intellectual effort. Their heads are covered with glass egg fragments. From the egg, hybrid creatures are generated: an invitation to escape from the limits of rational

thought and codified norms, to follow the challenge of change and let oneself travel to

unexpected contaminations: to finally discover oneself, with an open mind, freer.

Participating artists

Glasstress Boca Raton 2025 includes over twenty works by globally celebrated artists including Ai Weiwei with a giant chandelier, Fiona Banner with her life-size glass scaffold, multiple works by Tony Cragg, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Laure Prouvost, Anna Jermolaewa, Sean Scully, Thomas Schütte and Koen Vanmechelen.

Glasstress Boca Raton 2025 is curated by Senior Curator Kathleen Goncharov and is accompanied by an illustrated full-color catalog.

Exhibition facts

Boca Raton Museum of Art

Glasstress Boca Raton 2025

Boca Raton Museum of Art501 Plaza RealBoca Raton Florida 33432

Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun: 11:00 am - 6:00 pm

Thu: 11:00 am - 8:00 pm

Mon, Tue: Closed

Curated by Kathleen Goncharov

More via Boca Raton 2025

Background info on the Glasstress project