We are very concerned about the current situation in Ukraine. We would like to express our support and compassion with the suffering Ukrainians and people involved. We hope that the situation will calm down soon and peace will be restored.

Visit our Kuzebauch Gallery from 10th February to 15th April 2022 when you can see the exhibition by František Skála and Martin Janecký called František Skála’s Glass Kaleidoscope.

Euforik, 2022

Artists that prioritise an ongoing sense of experimentation often find themselves drawn to the field of glass. Meanwhile, glass masters (often themselves practicing artists), facing the additional challenge of learning the complex intricacies of forming glass, are typically more than happy to join forces and take up such a challenge. Aside from cultivating crucial mutual ties, these relationships can also yield much of note. One such relationship has formed between Czech artist František Skála and his counterpart, glass artist Martin Janecký.

František Skála has left the realisation of his mini-stories concerning strange, genetically modified figures (or entities) to Martin Janecký, a man who has successfully mastered the technology behind of hand shape glass. Skála, meanwhile, supplied the basic ideas in the form of drawings, also offering artistic correction input during the entire production process.

Dance Face to Face, 2022

From a wider perspective, Skála’s collaboration in this regard offers a satisfying outlet for the artist’s ability to perform a kind of “archaeological probing” of various materials, thus unveiling their inherent artistic properties, via the use of his painting, sculpting and installation-creating abilities. Skála is particularly interested in those materials for which such inherent potential may not be immediately obvious. Typically these are natural materials, such as coloured soil, branches, seashells, gastropod shells and the like. And now, glass has been added to the list, albeit of very different parameters. Skála’s works bear little resemblance to the predominant post-1945 trend in Czech glass art. After all, the main thrust of Skála’s modus operandi has been to toss out the existing rulebooks and simply focus on the pleasure of creation! Indeed, the fact that such works risk being excluded from the central currents of the contemporary Czech glass art movement is something Skála simply brushes off.  Originality, out-of-the-box thinking, even a touch of eccentricity – such facets form the very DNA of František Skála the artist.

The resulting individual sculptures reflect a kind of situational capturing of the adventure-filled escapades of grotesque-looking figures – almost mutant beings – who did not emerge by chance or by some automatic path, but rather came about via their creator’s modifying them into intelligent beings. Glass is melted in a furnace and worked according to František Skála’s designs.  The resulting art object is then cooled and subsequently matted. This is done in order to make the interior of the sculpture matted,  so as to guide the viewer’s eye purely towards the intricacies of the presented story. Another reason is to eliminate all peripheral distractions, namely glass reflections and sheen. As a result, the properties of the utilised material are directly subordinate to the desired narrative – to the intentions of the great storyteller himself, František Skála.

Happy new year from all of us at Happy Materials!

From 12th November 2021 to 9th January 2022, you can visit our Kuzebauch Gallery and see the exhibition View of the Outside by Michal Motyčka.

View of the Outside, 2021

The concept of space, customised to the observer’s interaction with a given area, represents the focal point of Michal Motyčka’s creative work. In his work on display at Galerie Kuzebauch, Motyčka showcases a literal window into an exhibition area, which is thus transformed into the dominant visual component of the presented art installation. An analysis of the shape and function of the window, its frame, and the essential reality of the image, along with the reflection of the real world found in the continuation or substitution of the space of the window via a mirror, leads to a kind of mutual visual integration – simply put, an outside view. In his works, Michal Motyčka is essentially saying: “a viewpoint is predictable in advance”.

View of the Inside I & II, 2019

In so doing, he ponders the question of the very nature of reality.  Furthermore, Motyčka is evidently seeking to break through into a kind of observable reality, and the perception and subjective interests of our point-of-view interpretation, into which such art is cognitively transformed. The ambitions of the author are clearly to present a sculpting solution that can activate a given space, inviting observers to discover its superficially indecipherable spatial interrelationships. This leads to an illumination of the artist’s own experiences with comprehending the concept of space as a natural confrontation with its surroundings, as well as making use of the opportunity to “once again see, glimpse, interpret…” something that we might not expect to find in an exhibition environment.

You can visit our Galerie Kuzebauch from 15th September to 31st October and see the exhibition Visions of One’s Own by Michaela Trávníčková, Marie Sixtová, Kristína Maňáková, Michaela  Kramulová, Irena Czepcová and Petr Stanický.

For more than ten years, the Glass Design (Design skla) studio at the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín’s Faculty of Multimedia Communications has served as one of the top established centres of its kind in the Czech Republic. Professor Petr Stanický, M.F.A., the head of the department, along with his assistant MgA. Irena Czepcová, offer their students considerable freedom to develop their own personal sense of artistic expression. Students gain inspiration by studying various aspects of their craft, including trying out various conceptual methods in glass making and looking for a way to expand technological possibilities with new media. One notable trait witnessed in these students  is a very specific pioneering approach towards working with glass that differs from traditional established techniques.  All this with a view of making a mark in the ever-developing international glass art scene.

Marie Sixtová – Bond (2019)

Standing before the ostensibly variegated works of four young artists, namely Michaela Kramulová, Kristina Maňáková, Michaela Trávníčková and Marie Sixtová, the question arises as to where to find a common thread. The answer lies in the distinct and peculiar mission of integrating glass in all its applied forms. For these four artists, glass serves as a kind of transparent gateway into the human soul – a world of dreams and emotions.

Michaela Trávníčková – Bubbles (2019)

From 17th June to 31st August you can visit the Kuzebauch Gallery and see the exhibition Light in Sculpture by Čestmír Suška.

The exhibition will be on display in the Lemberk granary from 18th June to 31st October as well.

Oko, 2003

Examining the relationship between the external and the internal and an interplay of light directly within given art objects – such characteristics have been evident in the works of Čestmír Suška since the early 1990s. In subsequent phases of his work Čestmír Suška has continued to promulgate the theme of internal space, with wood-related art in particular opening up a plethora of expressive opportunities.

Bob, 2004

The collection of sculptures exhibited in Galerie Kuzebauch was primarily created in 2002–2006 at Zdeňěk Lhotský’s Pelechov studio. One of the oldest works, titled Maska (Mask), has today become an iconic portrait representation of the author’s honouring of the field of sculpting. Meanwhile, Hvězdice (Starfish), with its baked clay shape, represents an exploration of the contradictions between the full and the empty. Osmička (Eight) represents an interplay between the presently trivial and the mysterious and moves the observer into a symbolic realm of infinity.

You can visit the Kuzebauch Gallery and see the exhibition Everything and Nothing from Václav Řezáč from 15th April to 11th June.

Václav Řezáč (*1977) is one of those with an experience in this mythical land of the Samurai. A graduate of both the High School of Applied Arts and Glassmaking in Železný Brod and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (specifically Vladimír Kopecký’s studio), Řezáč worked as a manager of Zdeněk Lhotský’s cast glass studio. Excelling in his own artistic and designer practice, his interests were originally in hot shaped and flat glass. Upon arriving to Toyama in 2016, where he spent the next three years, cast glass sculpture was among the few things that captured his imagination. Even though he previously knew all its technological aspects, his experience in this technique consisted of occasional experiments here and there. All it took was a journey to Japan for him to find his own way of approaching it. There, he learned that the Western tradition of saying all or nothing is not interesting enough, what he excels at is the Eastern tendency to say everything and nothing at the same time.

Řezáč’s works are refined and sophisticated, especially in their technological prowess, they are charming and prove that glass art still allows plenty of room for experimentation. One does not even need to put aside their craft and resign to the today’s obsession for concepts, those that transform glass into a mere material – to be abused rather than used.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to our friends, co-workers and partners from all of
Happy Materials!

The exhibition by Alena Matějka called Cabinet of Curiosities will be in Galerie Kuzebauch from 17th December 2020 to 26th February 2021.

One such artist possessing a gift of storytelling is the sculptor Alena Matějka. After graduating from The Glass Art School in Kamenický Šenov, she studied in the Glass Studio of professor Vladimír Kopecký at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, with a two-months internship at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Nowadays, Matějka lives partly in the Vysočina region, as well as alternating between Sweden and Italy. She often collaborates with her husband, the stone sculptor Lars Windenfalk.

Though not working with glass exclusively, it has an irreplaceable position in Matějka’s body of work. What other material would be able to connect the transient with the eternal, freeze time and create a seemingly static cabinet of curiosities, that would tumultuously intertwine reality with fiction, empathy with irony. Alena Matějka’s cast glass sculptures, often in the combination with other elements (such as stuffed animals), unsettle the viewer, providing no comfort and forcing them to interact.

You can see the exhibition Sevenvases from Jiří Pelcl in Galerie Kuzebauch from 1st October to 11th December 2020.

As an established Czech architect, designer and long-term professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Pelcl has been interested for a long time in topics on the intersection of sustainability and the seductive forces of consumerism.

Nowadays, environmental issues are part of the golden fund of all intellectual discussion, even amongst artist and designers. These issues became part of mainstream topics, thus lessening their impact, often resulting in mere demonstrations or descriptions of the status quo. Fortunately, there are still those, who can take this topic and transform it without any grand gestures into strong and impressive pieces. Jiří Pelcl (*1950) is among them.

The Sevenvases collection can be understood as a story of rebirth: seven materials, each designated for different applications, repurposed within the universal framework of a vase – like the ancient amphora from the early years of our civilisation. For someone, these can represent seven layers of heavens, seven spheres of the world, seven symbols aspiring towards a perfect harmony; for others, these are “merely” curious interior artefacts. However, Jiří Pelcl was able to revive seven banal, seemingly unattractive and uninteresting materials and give them back a sense of meaning and value. He is able to quietly convey to those interested that design can be more than just a pop-cultural idol.