Vetro

“Glass” (English) - transl. “Vetro” (Italian)

Glass is a paradox. Hard and delicate, but soft and tensile in its molten state. Shapeless, yet firm and ubiquitous in its multifarious role in human life. Man-made, yet naturally occurring in vitreous forms. It is melted sand, and frozen lava. It is a beauty of nature, and a necessity of man. In the same way, the irony of art exists. There is often an oscillation between form and function, requisites and aesthetics, not purely in the act of creation but in discourse and ethos. We may begin to talk about art only to create a nebulous haze, yet at the same time reach a crystal clear picture of how it carries us in the grand scheme of things. It is a means of survival, and a path to freedom.

Most of all, art is a vessel, much like glass or vetro, that encapsulates the fragility and resilience of an idea we see through in which we reach lucidity through different branches of a single epiphany—that we are looking at ourselves. Vetro, like art, is a mirror for our endless pursuit of the holy grail. We inevitably chase for the immaculate, the pristine, until we reach true obsidian.

This vision influences how Vetro, as a gallery, came to be. A versatile space for architects, artists, photographers, designers, musicians, and constructors of creative things alike, Vetro is a freedom vessel that aims to magnify the welding of different insights and art forms together.

Fittingly, the gallery is housed in a building composed almost entirely of glass, held together with fittings carefully distributed by Glittra Trading International Inc., a company that brings forth solutions for glass door and window control. Vetro proudly showcases these fittings for those who are fond of glass and would like to install these solutions in their own quarters. While the gallery serves as the artists’ den, architects and interior designers will also find the building as a haven for viewing products, discussing business, and altogether indulging in the artworks on display.

Shedding focus on the art of photography, the gallery aspires to guide the viewer’s optical consciousness through the images on its translucent walls, but does not limit itself to the medium. The glass that makes up Vetro is a lens to the intuition of great creative minds as well as new discoveries. The luster of how artists see the world through their eyes, or through a camera, is what Vetro seeks to capture in order to bring its audience a looking glass to the soul, and to the present zeitgeist.

The gallery intends to open equal windows of opportunity for showcasing videos, paintings, sculptures, and installations. In this manner, Vetro engages a potpourri of creative people from different walks of life—native or alien—in a transparent collective catharsis. Vetro is an amorphous yet malleable structure—open-ended, and an unabating work-in-progress; it’s what the artists and its audience make of it.