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The European glass scenery remains alive full of surprises.

For example, the annual exhibition “Ovengevormd Glas“ in the Dutch Joure has emerged as an attractive address for enthusiasts of art from glass. We have met many interesting newcomers who approach the art in a fresh and unprejudiced manner at this international show. One of them is Nataliya Vladychko from the Ukraine. Her tender, nostalgic lace handkerchief from fine Pâte de verre takes us to the past when such an utensil was of high value. Finally, a long contemplating desire came true to see works of the renowned artist Heike Brachlow displayed. The adopted Englishwoman is almost never represented in Germany so that we deemed ourselves extremely lucky to come to know her in Joure with her precisely cast and ground autonomous works. With “Ellipsis III“ we welcome the artist in our collection.

For the first time we visited the British Glass Biennale in Stourbridge. Even this visit was rewarding: We acquired the sculpture of Ashraf Hanna, which received the 1st prize. The Ethiopian artist mostly works with cast glass. He is fascinated from shapes that apparently change drawing the attention of the eye to their three-dimensional aspects. Among the representative number of the exhibits some new entries were chosen, but also a “well-known” I the meantime, Louis Thompson. “Panicum“, expression of harmony and magic, formally and stylistic supplementing his „DNA Helix“ already being represented in the collection.

Even in Germany two renowned glass prize awards took place in 2015 thanks to the glass museums Immenhausen and Rheinbach. Visits to these two exhibitions had serious consequences. Works full of poetry now enrich the narrative side of the glass collection.

Last but not least we want to announce a special highlight: In summer 2016 the glass museum Alter Hof Herding will celebrate its 20^th anniversary and the glass depot its 10^th anniversary. On the birthday we will present you a big anniversary exhibition, a comprehensive catalogue as well as with a glass edition designed for this festival.

Look forward with us to 2016 full of actions!

 

Photos:

Louis Thompson u. Hanne Enemark, Panicum in Amethyst, 2015 – Photo Ester Segarra

Ashraf Hanna, Untitled 1, 2014 – Photo Ester Segarra

Christina Kargl, Bowls of Nature, 2014 – Photo Christina Kargl

Michael Behrens, Seaforms 2014-116, 2014 – Photo Paul Niessen

South Africa, Japan, USA – and especially Australia! Talented artists from these far-off places exhibited award-winning works in Europe last year – reason enough for the Foundation to set off to experience these remarkable objects live in the hopes of enriching the collection with further multifaceted works of art.

Along the way, we noticed that artists from Australia are particularly well-represented on the European glass scene, perhaps because the history of glass art there traces its roots back to our own continent. The initial spark came in fact from the German artist Klaus Moje (1936–2016), who was summoned in 1982 to the School of Art at the Australian National University in Canberra to set up a study program for contemporary glass art. He rapidly succeeded in making glass a recognised artistic discipline in Australia. Today, many of his former students are enlivening the international glass art scene. One promising Australian newcomer is Marcel Hoogstad Hay, who works with traditional Venetian techniques and a fascinating spectrum of colours. Giles Bettison has long since made a name for himself in the art world. His beautifully crafted Murrini vessels follow in the tradition of Italian glass art while updating it with contemporary compositions that create unusual patterns.

Back home here in Lette, the appearance of our grounds has changed over the years, both outside the museum and in front of our glass depot, where H.-W. Horn’s float-glass sculpture “Spurensuche, I learn from disaster” has a commanding presence and glass objects titled “Flüchtigkeit des menschlichen Lebens” (Transience of Human Life) by Wladimir Rudolf seem to be suspended above the grass. Set before the museum, Torsten Rötzsch’s extraordinary installation “Valge” likewise proves that art and nature can converge almost magically.

Finally, we would like to draw your attention to two further exhibitions that we will be featuring following “New Acquisitions 2016”. In May we will present works by the legendary Polish artist Stanislaw Borowski, and in September we will welcome the new generation of students from the Belgian Instituut voor Kunst en Ambacht (IKA) in Mechelen.

We cordially invite you to treat yourself to some new encounters with the endlessly fascinating world of glass!

 

Photos:

Giles Bettison, Billett 09-6, 2009 – Photo AHH

Manuela Castro Martins, Impossible Jar I, 2012 – Photo Jorge Manuel Enes Soares

Yoshiko Okada, Three friends of winter – Bamboo, 2014 – Photo Ester Segarra

Vittoria Parrinello, The perimeter of air, 2014 – Photo Vittoria Parrinello

After arriving in Rheinbach from Poland in 1982, Stanislaw Borowski embarked on a life journey that still fills him with gratitude: “I’ve been so incredibly lucky in my life, met the right people at the right time and made the right decisions. I was able to find fulfilment as an artist, I have a great family – things couldn’t be better.”

He ranks today among the world’s pre-eminent glass artists and is considered the undisputed master of glass engraving. In his pieces, he combines the diverse techniques of glass working with engraving in a unique fashion to create his fascinatingly detailed, often surrealistic imagery. Stanislaw Borowski was born in 1944 in Moûtiers in France, where his father was employed as a migrant worker in the coal industry. Four years later, all the propaganda for a fresh start for the Polish People’s Republic lured the family back to their homeland. The young Stanislaw sensed early on that he had an artistic streak, but his father first made him learn a more solid trade. He became a mechanic. In 1964, chance took him to the Krosno glassworks – and he was hooked. He immediately got a job there in order to learn about the different areas of glass production and design. But working at the industrial glassworks did not satisfy his artistic urge.

Secretly he set up a workshop in his aunt’s garage, where he experimented intensively but on a shoestring with the material of glass while reading the literature on the subject. He then made his first contacts with German artists and galleries in 1977 at the exhibition accompanying the 1st Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass. When Stanislaw Borowski then moved to Rheinbach in 1982, his career skyrocketed. He was finally able to do his own artistic work, display it in exhibitions, and exchange ideas and knowledge with other artists such as Pavel Molnár, Udo Edelmann, Gerd Kruft, Erwin Eisch and Jack Ink.

He achieved a sensational breakthrough in the USA, where galleries and collectors scrambled to purchase one of his pieces. Demand was so high that new production possibilities had to be found. Borowski found a temporary solution in Hennef near Bonn, and then set up his own private glassworks in Bunzlau (Bolesławiec) in Poland in 1992, where he has been producing his work ever since. In the meantime, his sons Pawel and Stani Jan have also taken up the profession of glass artist, while Wiktor now manages the family business – a happy situation for the established glass artist, who can now see his talent and his love for glass being kept alive in the next generation.

Our new exhibition provides a glimpse of Stanislaw Borowski’s life’s work. At the centre are his early pieces from Rheinbach, works from the phase during which he took the American market by storm, and finally artworks from the period leading into the new millennium. His work is presented not only in the context of selected pieces by his earlier fellow-artists but also in combination with works by his two sons Pawel and Stani Jan. The baton has been passed on, and Stanislaw Borowski’s lifetime achievements are pointing the way to the future!

Photos:

Stanislaw Borowski, The Grande Valentino II, 2005, Leihgabe THE EKARD COLLECTION – Photo Grzegosz Matoryn

Stanislaw Borowski, White Ship, 2003, Leihgabe Borowski – Photo Sasa Fuis

Stanislaw Borowski, Deep from my heart, 2005, Leihgabe Borowski – Photo Sasa Fuis

Stanislaw Borowski, Tales from the blue Lagoon, 2006, Leihgabe Borowski – Photo Sasa Fuis

Exotic, spiritual and emotional – Japanese art has an aesthetic all its own. In our new exhibition we delve deep into this world to present current artworks in glass. These sculptures, installations and wall pictures made of glass were already on view last year at the Glasmuseum Frauenau (in the Bavarian Forest), so we seized the opportunity to exhibit this unique selection of works at the Glasmuseum Lette as well.

Art lovers in Germany have had to wait a long time to experience contemporary Japanese glass of such excellence and diversity: The last major exhibition on this subject took place in 1993 at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. Since then, Japan’s still-young glass scene has undergone some fundamental changes. While artists there initially worked with the medium of glass under the influence of European and North American role models, today’s generation takes inspiration from their own Japanese roots and values.

Our exhibition now gives visitors a chance to feel the effects of this elemental Japanese aesthetic sensibility. In Japanese art and culture, light and shadow, space and emptiness, silence and attentiveness are intuitively perceived and recognised not as opposites, as negative or positive poles as with us, but as value-free qualities that are inextricably connected. Only together do the two poles generate a whole.

The exhibition traces an arc from Japan to Europe, because it also includes works by Japanese artists living in Europe and by European artists who have lived and worked for a time in Japan. Viewers are therefore invited to look at Japan from multiple perspectives.

We would like to warmly thank the participating artists for making this possible:

Machiko Ito (Toyama, J), Masami Hirohata (Nuremberg, D), Jin Hongo (Toyama, J), Tsuyoshi Inoue (Tokyo, J), Ai Kigoshi (Tokyo, J), Yoshiaki Kojiro (Takayama, J), Takahito Komure (Akita, J), Runa Kosogawa (Takayama, J), Yoko Miyata (Hiroshima, J), Keiko Mukaide (Edinburgh, GB), Akira Nakagawa (Hokkaido, J), Mica Okuno (Yokohama, J), Shunji Omura (Chibaken, J), Mare Saare (Tallinn, EST), Masahiro Sasaki (Nagoya, J), Lada Semecká (Teplice, CZ), Yoshi Yamauchi (Kevelaer, D), Harumi Yukutake (Tokyo, J)

Thank you – ありがとう

 

Photos:

Shunji Omura, Blade Man 004, 2014 – Photo SAIKI TAKU

Takahito Komure, Message from the passed, 2015 – Photo Takahito Komure

Yoshiaki Kojiro, Breaking Composition 6, 2016 – Photo Yoshiaki Kojiro

Akira Nakagawa, Wind deviated, 2008 – Photo Akira Nakagawa

Masahiro Sasaki, Tensei #1604, 2016 – Photo Masahiro Sasaki

Keiko Mukaide, Family Tree, 2016 – Photo Keiko Mukaide

Masami Hirohata, Apfel und Birne kann man nicht vergleichen, 2013 – Photo Helge Articus

Mare Saare, Mono no aware, 2017, Detail – Photo Mare Saare

Photo above: Runa Kosogawa, Engraved on Life, 2013 – Photo Kichiro Okamura

 “I see my knitted work as a metaphor for social structure. Individual strands are weak and brittle on their own, but deceptively strong when bound together. The connections are what bring strength and integrity to the whole and what keep it intact.” This is how the Canadian artist Carol Milne describes her unusual work. She is a pioneer in the field of “knitted glass”, experimenting with her material and persistently pushing its boundaries.

Carol Milne is one of the artists we discovered on our travels through Europe in 2017. Her work was on view in an exhibition in Hasselt, Belgium, where we also encountered the fantastic glass cloth objects made by UK artist Cathryn Shilling. The dazzling surfaces of her three-dimensional artworks give the impression of vibrating dynamics: through the unexpected interplay of texture, light and colour, Shilling succeeds in creating a stylised feeling of human movement without literally representing the human shape in the fabric. Though separate, the individual forms are connected by an almost dance-like flow of movement.

Our constant quest for special works in glass also took us to the exhibition HuGlass 2017 in Budapest, where we were amazed by what we saw, for example the sculpture “Big Fish Eats Small Fish” by the Hungarian artist Balázs Sipos. Sipos creates wonderfully detailed figures, often inspired by everyday life, the problems of our times and the inner struggles that can result. He sees himself as a glass sculptor, but his real tools are a caustic sense of humour and a predilection for the grotesque which allow him to venture a straightforward social critique.

We naturally did not neglect well-known artists in 2017 either. Anna Torfs, for example, impressed us with her breathtakingly beautiful vessel “Parts High”. The ability of glass to capture, reflect and absorb light is at the centre of the work of this Belgian-born artist and designer, who has lived and worked in Prague for many years. With sharp cuts, she reveals layer by layer how the respective work is structured. She thus lays bare airy, luminous depths through which energy and sensuality virtually pulsate.

Last but not least, we would like to draw your attention to the next exhibition after “New Acquisitions 2017”. In the summer of 2018, we will be presenting current work by students and professors at the Kamenický Šenov Glass School in the Czech Republic.

 

Photos from the left:

Anna Torfs, Parts High – Crystal Gold, 2017 – Photo Jaroslav Kvíz

Agnieszka Leśniak Banasiak, Enigma II, 2015 – Photo Krzysztof Pachurka

Carol Milne, Purple Reigns, 2016 – Photo Carol Milne

Cathryn Shilling, Hidden Gestures II, 2014 – Photo Ester Segarra

Cathryn Shilling u. Anthony Scala, Fragile Nature of Earthly Pleasures, 2016 – Photo Ester Segarra

Peter Bremers, Perception 4, 2011 – Photo Paul Niessen

Zuzsanna Kóródi, PF I, 2017 – Photo Zsuzsanna Kóródi

Gordana Drinković, Iyalawo, 2016 – Photo Mario Krištofić

Photo above: Carol Milne, Purple Reigns, 2016 – Photo Carol Milne