GlazenHuis presents ‘Chinese Whispers‘ by Erin Dickson, ‘A world of Sand‘ by Atelier NL and ‘Transparency of Colours‘ by the Academy of Arts Architecture and Design of Prague.
Erin Dickson (UK) _ Chinese Whispers
Niveau 0
Inspired by the childhood game of the same name, Chinese Whispers brings together international glass practitioners through the craft of glassblowing.
Moving between languages and communicating only through email and social media, Erin Dickson uses Google Translate to forward instructions for the making of an object, written by the preceding artist in the chain. The resulting series of morphing forms highlights the global migration of people, skills and ideas, and that despite advances in communication technologies, information can still be lost in translation.
A World of Sand / SandBank _ Atelier NL
Niveau +1
The glass industry uses ‘pure’ sand that is quarried from just a few locations on earth. All the other sands contain ‘impurities’ that disturb the efficiency of the production process. Challenged by the idea of making glass that actually reveals those distinct local qualities, Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck began their research into the geological history and chemical composition of sand. They followed the path of ancient Roman glass merchants, taking samples of eighty types of sand and mapping them. Through extensive experimentation, they succeeded in melting glass from the wild sand samples. This culminated in the creation of ‘SandBank’: Atelier NL’s first material archive, a glass library that displays a stunning variety of colours, opacities and crystallization patterns. From silvery-black to sea-blue, or grassy-green to ash-grey.
Transparency of Colours _UMPRUM
Niveau -1
The Transparency of Colours exhibition emanates from a project called Colours of Transparency, which took place as part of the London Design Festival in 2018 presenting a cross-discipline selection of works by students and graduates of the Studio of Glass of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. The tradition of the AAAD in Prague Studio of Glass dates back to the 1940s and is closely connected with the renewal and post-war expansion of the glass industry in then Czechoslovakia. Professors, students and graduates of the studio played an important role as industrial designers, successfully presenting their skills at EXPO world exhibitions in Brussels, Montreal and Osaka, and, since the late 1950s, have been elevating the unique qualities of glass thanks to the innovative use of fused technologies. Glass sculptures by the artistic duo of Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová also penetrated into the realm of free art. Due especially to its specific material and optical properties, glass has become a new and full-fledged sculptural material that finds wide application not only in design, but also in free art and, thus, glass specifically bridges the border of both of these creative worlds. The Studio of Glass at the AAAD in Prague, which has made a significant contribution to this development, has always balanced on the border of free and applied art since its foundation, and this is very much the case today.
This Transparency of Colours exhibition presents the work of 24 glass artists from among students, graduates, doctoral students and heads of the Studio of Glass at the AAAD in Prague. Their works are not only a look back at more than a decade of studio activity under the leadership of Professor Rony Plesl and Assistant Professor Klára Horáčková, but are also an envisioned look into the future. Many of the exhibiting students will be entering the professional art world in the coming years and, as such, their current work is a sign of their future directions. The exhibition shows, in a highly condensed form, how the recent development of contemporary glass in the Czech Republic has taken place and, at the same time, shows the continuity of the studio in its intentions to transition from free art to design and back. Thinking about the concept of a free work of art or design proposal, with emphasis on the idea, metaphor and expression of the final form, the ability to convey the authors’ vision to the viewer in the form of a clever and content-inflated succinctness is the ideal sought result of the presented works. The freedom of artistic expression has been cultivated in the Studio of Glass over many years, which we present as evident in the number of forms and variety of associated materials and techniques used.
The exhibition includes an installation by Tomáš Kučera and Johan Pertl entitled Nonequilibrium State of Matter, which was created as part of their artistic residency at the GlazenHuis Museum in Lommel, Belgium.
