In the Summer of 2018 you could see the acme of international glass art in the GlazenHuis. Under the denominator ‘TACTILE’ curator Sue Schiepers brought together different trend-setting glass artworks in a stimulating exhibition.
The top work of the exhibition was undoubtedly ‘Chado’, a life-size glass dress by Karen LaMonte. The American graduated as a designer, but then turned her hand more or less immediately to glass art. In her work she often explores themes such as embodiment and identity, character and personality, the social life of women, the role of the body and the human form. Her life-size garments have since become her trademark. A dazzling technical feat and a time-consuming process, because each such dress is a good 9 months in the making. The Chado dress has a draped look, while the glass image invites touching and feeling. Not that you could, but it did illustrate the field of tension in which ‘Tactile’ operates. From knitted glass (Carol Milne, Canada) and floating glass carpets (Nava, Venezuela) to thrown-open glass books with wafer-thin pages (Anne Petters, Germany) or deep-sea coral-like glass sculptures (Dafna Kaffeman, Israel); the sense of touch was tried and tested. And even importuned. Because you couldn’t stroke and couldnt touch! Tactile showed glass like you never saw before.
Curator:
Sue Schiepers
Artists/designers:
Anne Claude Jeitz & Alain Calliste (LU, FR), Dafna Kaffeman (ISR), Marta Klonowska (PL), Sylvia Kopka (DE), Karen LaMonte (USA), Shayna Leib (USA), Carol Milne (CA), Ana Maria Nava (VZL), Michèle Perozeni (FR), Anne Petters (DE), Cathryn Shilling (GB), Petra Sindelar (CZ), Kristiina Uslar (EST), Sylvie Vandenhoucke (BE)
