On entering Villa Kérylos, visitors are immediately greeted with two words written in neon letters: mesure (measure/moderation) and démesure (immoderation/excess). “Man is the measure of all things,” claimed Protago- ras, providing an aphorism that has since become a humanist maxim. For Pierini, however, humanism is rooted in revolt, rebellion, in the sense conveyed by Camus. “Rebellion in itself is moderation, and it demands, defends, and recreates it throughout history and its eternal disturbances.” Mesure is not the Pensée Tiède found in the first-floor bathroom, where hot and cold flows form “tepid thought” that glimmers weakly before disappearing down the plughole of a heavy marble bathtub. With Pensée Tiède, Pierini has created a deliberately ironic, insipid piece that dims the presence of light and colour.

Nothing could be further removed from tepid thought than Camus's sense of measure or moderation: “Moderation, born of rebellion, can only live by rebellion. It is a perpetual conflict continually created and mastered by the intelligence.” The creative

conflict embodied by mesure and démesure is immediately apparent in the entrance hall and forecourt. La Ligne et l’Angle sets the tone with its varying lengths of thick, bevelled blue and mauve glass strips that contrast with meandering lines inspired by the friezes found through- out the villa.

Visitors then encounter the replica of a statue now held by the Vatican Museum in Rome. A century ago, Théodore Reinach, the man who designed Villa Kérylos, felt it represented the Greek poet and politician Solon, even though it is typically taken to represent Sophocles. Irrespective of which historical figure the work embodies, the key is the concept of mesure. The three words emblazoned in neon urge us to consider the°“metron”: mesure in blue, which then morphs into démesure and des mesures in white. These words resonate with Solon’s own actions in early sixth century Athens, when the legendary founder of Athenian democracy declared, “I made the laws equal for the poor man and the powerful, ensuring impartial justice for all.”

Violence

Visitors will then need to venture further into the villa to reveal the ripples of immoderation and violence, featured by the artist in symbolic pieces. Après la Bataille is one example. On dis- play in the dining room (Triklinos), it comprises a large orange vase, reminiscent in shape of the containers made by Biot potters until the end of the 20th century, alongside which we see the broken remains of two other vases lying on antique tables chosen by Reinach himself. Pierini poured molten glass into each, causing them to explode. The remnants were then captured in cooled translucence, conjuring the image of glass pooling from the broken vessels, as if oil or wine were flowing from amphoras.

We are all of course free to interpret the symbolism in our own way. Yet we cannot help feeling that those fragile glass pieces sitting atop the Triklinos tables somehow evoke human interaction and burgeoning trade throughout the Mediterranean. The broken amphora is also indicative of the violence of people indi"erent to its fragile beauty. People unable to communicate, dialogue or build the commonality of shared culture. These objects destroyed by the molten glass symbolize immoderation and excess, or a “non-Mediterranean mindset”, to paraphrase Camus. In the face of Greek measure and moderation, immoderation and excess engender conflict, catastrophe and death: these three vases, with their simple shape and form, weave a tale of tragedy.

Fulgurations

Born of fire, opaque or translucent, glass either blocks rays of light or allows them to pass through. The work of glass artists reflects the ongoing dance with light and its effects. Pierini combines the play of light with meaningful focus on its symbolism. He sees the library as an essential part of Villa Kérylos: representing the humanist culture and the light of reason. This vast room is sparsely furnished with two work surfaces, closets and shelves that hold books and antiques. Théodore Reinach designed the library as a haven of peace and meditation, as re-reflected in the Greek wording found on the walls of the room: “Here, among the orators, sages and poets, I delight in the quiet of eternal beauty.”

In these soothing surroundings, Pierini sought to capture the flood of sunlight striking the reader. On one of the medallions below the mezzanine, we find the names Plato and Aristotle side by side. Nearby, Pierini has hung two words in neon: Haute Lumière (high light). Here, overhead in the library, these words hint at the power of lightning, both creative and dreadful. The imagery is reminiscent of the thunderbolts wielded by Zeus to smite Prometheus and the rebellious titans—an association that has clearly not escaped Pierini. Drawing on his fascination with lightning, the artist chose to work with fulgurite, a natural, non-transparent glass formed when lightning strikes sandy ground.

Pierini also has Albert Camus’ The Stranger in mind here. Haute Lumière is reminiscent of the intolerable solar burden bearing down on the story’s protagonist, Meursault, at that fatal moment in time when he encounters “the Arab” on an Algiers beach in suffocating heat, under that burning sun. The sunlight that strikes and blinds Meursault is seen as a hostile presence: Apollo, the god of light, music and medicine, is also a god with a knife, a merciless deity who drives Oedipus to blindness. How could we not think of Sophocles, whose name figures on another medallion in the library, opposite Haute Lumière? When Oedipus unearths the awful truth, the cause of the plague that is ravaging the city of Thebes, he pierces his own eyes, preferring eternal blindness to the sight before him. In The Stranger, Meursault, accused of murder, is also condemned without ever really understanding the motive for his actions, seemingly driven solely by solar fate. Haute Lumière thus evokes a sense of power that contrasts with the moderation and tranquillity sought by someone reading in the library. Pierini’s neon emits a light that is more tragic than comforting.

Migrations 

Light and sun do not convey the same dysphoria in L’Objet du Voyage, the installation found in the Amphithyros, between the library and the Triklinos. Pierini has created nine translucent and opaque glass vases using different techniques, including merletto, invented by a 20th century glassmaker from Murano, Italy, which involves interweaving glass threads in a pattern akin to lacework. These vases, inspired by the amphoras of antiquity, conjure images of peaceful trade between the peoples of the Mediterranean. 

However, although glass is historically tied to everyday applications, Pierini has liberated these pieces from the yoke of utility and turned them into what he likes to call “living” sculptures. In sculpting glass by weaving the magic of materials and light, he gives another nod to his favourite author, Albert Camus, who wrote in The Rebel that sculpture is “the greatest and most ambitious of all the arts”, an art that seeks to stylize gestures and movements, to “imprison, in one significant expression, the fleeting ecstasy of the body or the infinite variety of human attitudes”. In L’Objet du Voyage, each vase, with its handles, neck and curves, takes on the appearance of a statuette whose opaque whiteness evokes the colour of archaic female figurines. 

The amphora sheds its erstwhile status as a container designed to carry oil, wine or grain, and instead takes on the dignified posture of an ancient idol, conjuring the memory of pre-Hellenistic art and the Cycladic figurines of the third millennium BC. Pierini has described L’Objet du Voyage as an immersive piece, yet it also symbolizes travel: these objects that seemingly transcend space and time bring to mind a fleeting glimpse of those fateful migrations to which the Mediterranean all too often bears witness today.

Galets et Collines

Galets are pieces of glass art scattered across the shelves of the library, among oil lamps, vases and Tanagra statuettes. Their full, rounded forms and dark hue give them the look of soft, shiny stones that appear to have been hand-polished, or are perhaps pebbles smoothed by the sea over millions of years. They reflect the immemorial ages of humanity and the action of time, which, through erosion, patiently lends the pebbles their patina. Their warm roundness woos the hand, imparts the urge to touch them and feel their smooth or granular texture, as if the tactile sensation could reveal to us the reason for their mysterious presence among the remnants of antiquity that Théodore Reinach collected in his time. 

Like Galets, the organic Collines form two groups with an imposingly enigmatic yet reassuring presence. An initial cluster sits in the Balaneion, near the entrance to the villa. There, the harmonious and homogenous colours of Collines (mauves, blues and pinks alternating with translucent and gold pieces) line the two sides of the pool, creating an angle with the fountain at its apex. These works—with a soft roundness in keeping with the curves of the pool and the niche—carry special meaning for the artist: they suggest the fertility and fecundity of nature through their feminine form. The other group is installed outside on the rocky ground near the garden. These pieces are reminiscent in form of shells, eggs or rocks, and have been arranged in a straight line. The irregular contours of the organic Collines counter the right angle formed by the two white walls, which tower over these little multi-coloured, fragile objects nestled on the villa floor.

Transmutations 

Pierini drew inspiration from Brancusi’s Endless Column and Bird in Space to create Colonnes Roseaux, which imitate bamboo and rise up to six metres in height. They stand in the centre of the villa, opposite an Oleander, sparking a dialogue between vegetable and mineral. Colonnes Roseaux are made up of modules akin to the drums used in classical columns. The circumference of these modules, at the join, is based on the size of the fluting on the Doric columns used for the peristyle. The verticality of Colonnes Roseaux matches that of Arbres Repères, which imitates an emblematic Mediterranean tree: the cypress. These arboreal landmarks stand between two and four metres tall and are a tour de force, testament to the technical prowess of the artist: Pierini created pieces over a metre in length, pushing the glass bubble on the end of the blowpipe to its very limit. The stones used for the base come from various sources, including Spain, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia and Italy, symbolizing the shared heritage of Mediterranean cultures.

The glass trees—at once both fragile and resistant—and Colonnes Roseaux attest to Pierini’s fascination with all forms of transformation enabled by glass, midway between vegetable and mineral. These transmutations are particularly evident in Mer Intérieure, a piece created especially for the Villa Kérylos Antiques Gallery. The monumental sculpture features a huge glass mosaic that embraces intuition, turning liquid into solid. It captures the movement of a wave as it surges in through a window and rises up in the gallery to form a huge curve. The many cobalt, ultramarine, midnight and purplish blue hues lend the piece a bright, iridescent look, like the sea. Through this combination of abstract components, Pierini has captured the instant when the wave threatens to bring its full force to bear and swoop down on us. Mer Intérieure, attached to a bare stone wall, reflects the wonder of the Mediterranean, so dear to the artist, with its crossroads of cultures. A tragic, violent, solar sea enclosed by land.

Christophe Corbier, Researcher, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).