From 22nd March to 17th May 2019 you can visit our Galerie Kuzebauch and experience the exhibition of Ondřej Strnadel – SOAP.

Moravian Wallachia (Valašsko) is one of the Czech Republic’s richest regions in terms of glass production traditions. Today, such traditions are primarily preserved and cultivated by the High School of Applied Arts and Glassmaking Valašské Meziříčí and the Glass Design Studio at The University of Tomáš Baťa in Zlín. It is no coincidence that these institutions are also closely associated with Czech glass artist Ondřej Strnadel (born 1979), who teaches glassmaking in both Valašské Meziříčí and Zlín and is continually drawing inspiration from his native region. Yet such local inspiration is also purposefully attuned to a wider audience, as attested to by successful presentations of Strnadel’s works in countries such as France, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Holland and Italy. In 2018, the Czech glass artist was the recipient of the Bavarian State Prize.

Understanding Strnadel’s work requires an appreciation of the wider history of modern Czech art glass. Since its emergence during the mid-20th century, Czech art glass has built a strong reputation for its artistic ingenuity and originality on the one hand, and exquisite craftsmanship on the other. But in most cases, this represents a merging of two divergent worlds – one represented by the artist, and the other by the glassmaker; one ostensibly for the artistic creator, and the other for the hands-on craftsman. But Strnadel belongs to a privileged minority able to operate in an entirely self-reliant capacity across both of these fields. Which may also help to explain why his works lack any kind of pretence or affectations. Rather, despite considerable creativity, they remain modest, forthright, honest, and accessible to a wider audience.

The SOAP collection features works by Strnadel created with the aid of glass, hand-blown into a wooden mould. The works feature oblong forms and distinct colours, with surfaces broken up by cleverly distributed minor irregularities. In this sense, Strnadel continues to further cultivate a distinctive personal aesthetic of plain geometric objects given a sense of uniqueness via the addition of atypical details. Such details help to imbue Strnadel’s glass art with a sense of internal dynamism, tension and refined craftsmanship.

Exhibition Glass Rituals will showcase four distinctive Czech glass artists. The selection aims to show the diversity with which glassmakers approach their creation. The curatorial selection provides a comprehensive picture of contemporary Czech studio-glass created by what is often labelled as the “fairer sex” through intergenerational dialogue of the artists. Klára Horáčková experiments with glass and transforms it into delicate forms. She uses her art to put forward a vision of evolution – biomorphic and almost otherworldly objects from fused glass, resembling rock formations. Eva Eisler workis a manifestation of an intersection of the past and futurewith glass silhouettes referring to archetypal image of goddesses. The imagery stems from ancient rituals and fertility symbols. Lada Semecká tells a story through unique properties and origin of given material. Her glass paintings evoke fluidity and imagination while basalt stone objects emphasize its unique surface, resilience and resonance. Vladimíra Klumpar focuses oncast glass sculptures that are either inspired by geometric or biomorphic shapes. In her work light and the depth of space play crucial role.

Klára Horáčková, White Shoots

Eva Eisler, From the Past – Amber

Lada Semecká, Universe

 Vladimíra Klumpar, Orange Wave

From 11st January to 15th March 2019 you can visit our Galerie Kuzebauch and experience the exhibition of Emma Woffenden and Petr Stanický.

Emma Woffenden is a graduate of the famous London-based Royal College of Art (RCA). Since starting out in the early 1990s, she has devoted herself to the art of sculpting.  Woffenden makes creative use of glass and other materials, and has a particular inclination towards figures and organic shapes. Her works are evocative, capture a sense of motion, and even exude a sense of irony and provocation. Spiritual subject matters are a regular inspiration; as is a specific fascination with man as a multilayered being, both noble and comical; add to that a great affinity for working with contrasting materials and ideas.

Petr Stanický, head of the Glass Design studio at Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín, also sees himself as a sculptor first, and a glass artist second. For Stanický, glass represents one of the best materials for the creation of art objects and compositions – ones that often seek to either take over a particular space, or unveil a new dimension therein. His works are brimming with ideas; they are almost puritanically clean; and they are meticulously thought-out and constructed. And yet Stanický – similarly to Emma Woffenden – is also able to create intimate individual pieces, expressing an interest in, among other things, figural motifs.

The Contact – Isolation exhibition offers visitors a window into the creative minds of two notable, distinctive, and primarily intellectually kindred artistic spirits. Emma Woffenden and Petr Stanický have created specific new works for Galerie Kuzebauch, which seek to affirm that notions of glass and space are both stimulating, thought-provoking and even surprising.

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

Happy Materials!

From 26th November 2018 to 4th January 2019 you can visit our Galerie Kuzebauch and experience the exhibition of Josef Divín.

Landscapes, seas, horizons, together with other natural elements permeate the work of Josef Divín. The artist’s interventions adapt flat, moulded, blown, painted, engraved, etched or cut glass. The creation of hand-made spatial objects often requires Divín to work molten blown glass (including preserving the head, or excess glass at the upper part of the blowpipe, which is normally cut off). This is followed by a heat phase of creating structures via the application of silver foil; after cooling, the final objects are fine-tuned, for example via custom cutting.

The title Night Sceneries depicts this unrestricted creative process, both in the creation of glass vessels, and in the working of flat fused glass, has yielded a number of melancholic glass compositions, radiating a variety of artistic meanings. The works serve as a kind of symbol, enabling Divin’s landscapes to offer a multitude of interpretations and connotations dependant on each observer.

Galerie Kuzebauch cordially invites you to the guided tour of the Night Sceneries exhibition with the artist Josef Divín, the tour will end with the launch of a re-edition of Sylva Petrová’s book České sklo.

The tour takes place on December 18, 2018 from 16:30.

Come and enjoy the Christmas spirit over a cup of moulded wine in a company of glass art.

Starting September, 19 do pay us visit at Galerie Kuzebauch and explore the exhibition of the one and only Dana Zámečníková. The exhibition ends November, 19 2018.

It is Claude Vernet’s famous painting „Storm on the Mediterranean sea“ that forms the basis of her site-specific installation. The reason? For years, print of this painting hung above her bed in the home of her parents, thus becoming an indelible part of her world.

Zámečníková studied during the 1960s and the 1970s at Czech Technical University and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Her background in architecture is visible in her utilisation of the exhibition space as a kind of notional frame, into which one is invited to step in. The entire exhibition is also influenced by time of day and weather conditions.

The works of Dana Zámečníková form a part of over thirty prestigious public collections across Europe, Asia, America and Australia. These include The Corning Museum of Glass, The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museè des Arts Dècoratifs in Paris. Very few Czech glass artist have managed to attain such recognition and prestige abroad.

But Zámečníková is far from resting on her laurels, constantly honing the potential of her artistic output, including the incorporation of modern technologies.

From 25 July to 11 September 2018 in Galerie Kuzebauch you have a chance to admire extraordinary work of Barbora Tydlitátová and Natálie Bozděhová who represent the future generation of Czech glassmaking talent. Barbora and Natálie are kindred artistic spirits work both individually, and as a pair, as part of a loose artistic association known on-line as
“p a z d r á t i”.

Both graduated together at the Technical University of Liberec (TUL) in the field of Glass and Jewellery Design. This was followed by an effort to further deepen their knowledge of glass via studies at The High School of Applied Arts for Glassmaking in Železný Brod (SUPŠ) in the field of Molten Glass Shaping. They are fascinated by the ways in which glass is able to change its character via the creative application of a variety of techniques. In her collection of glass art objects known as ZEVNITŘ (Inside), Tydlitátová turns custom hand-blown glass shapes inside-out by applying raw glass items. Meanwhile, in her KAZARI collection of containers, Bozděchová’s works represent a play on Egyptian-Art Noveau techniques of “combing”. Finally, their joint project, a jewellery collection known as ROTTENSCHMUCK, is intended as an exploration of the ambivalent relationship of Western civilisation towards the consumption of food.

For both, glass represents a material through which they express their respective unique perceptions and interpretations of the world around them. They are not afraid to experiment, or to take bold risks – albeit ones which are properly considered. They think long and hard about the artworks they seek to create, with as much effort put into measuring, planning and designing as the actual production of their final works.

Editors of our magazine Material Times have prepared fresh articles on the topics of crafts, design, materials, architecture and environment that were all put together to form the magazine’s third printed issue. On its 160 pages, Material Times allows the reader to dive into a forest where trees are cut in accordance with lunar cycles, visit the studio of an award-winning glass artist Zuzana Kubelková or read an interview with Andrej Boleslavský, who knows how to dance in virtual reality. Essay by the curator Petr Nový and the provocative lecture of the biologist Jiří Sádl will leave readers wondering about the life cycle and various forms of things. The remaining pages reveal fascinating tales and thoughts from people creating new materials, with a particular focus on microbes, fungi or bioplastics dissolvable in carbon and water.

“In our third printed issue, we focused on the relationship of mankind and its environment. What we were interested in is the things that we focus on in our interaction with it and what remains on the outskirts of our interest,” says the editor in chief Tereza Lišková. “I believe that readers will find their own unique way to read our magazine. If they’ll enjoy revealing the links tying the articles together – I’d be quite happy. But I’m also curious what will catch their attention and the ways they will understand the magazine as a whole.”

Plan you visit! Come to Galerie Kuzebauch from 1 June to 22 July and see the cut glass objects of artist Anna Polanská. Her items feature bold etching deep into the surface of the glass. Together, these create a blend which both evokes the archetypal features of the natural world, and also fleeting touches of the aesthetics of ancient gem cutters, as well as the architecture of the 1930s era. Polanská’s work comes across not as artificial or predictable, but rather as naturalistic, organic, and spontaneous. And depending on the perspective of the observer it is possible to ascertain not only variations in form, but also in character. And this interaction with observers means that Polanská’s objects ultimately become a kind of living entity; their unique surfacing serves not just as decoration, but as an expression of essential character. Like the contours of the Earth’s surface, or the wrinkles on the aged faces of humans, Polanská’s engraved glass surfaces offer a tantalising story of the very nature and possibilities of a unique material.

Anna Polanská was born in 1973 in the Czech town of Mladá Boleslav. She graduated in the field of glass engraving from the Secondary School of Glassmaking in Kamenický Šenov. This was followed by university studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), first at the studio of Professor Kurt Gebauer (sculpture), and subsequently under Professor Marian Karel (glass in architecture). Polanská has spent the last eighteen years heading the glass engraving department at the High School of Applied Arts for Glassmaking in Železný Brod. Not only does she design her own glass objects, but Polanská also takes a hand-on approach to cutting, gluing and a variety of other techniques.

Until 28 May 2018 you may visit our Galerie Kuzebauch and see incommutable exhibition of Martin Janecký called Expression. Today, Janecký has earned a rightful place among the greatest not just Czech, but also global, stars of the glass scene. His original works are generating great enthusiasm among galleries and collectors, including from global celebrities. His successes are not just the result of talent, creativity, and artistic boldness, but chiefly a considerable amount of hard work.

Martin Janecký began working with glass at the age of thirteen at his farther´s firm. After graduating from the Glass School Nový Bor he set out into the wider world. He gained experiences in places as far afield as South Africa, Sweden, Holland, and chiefly in the US, where he studie dat the Pilchuck Glass School under Richard Royal and William Morris. It wasn´t long before Janecký himself became a highly southt teacher in his field. Among his most recognised strengths is an ability to master the glass moulding technology of so-called inside bubble sculpting, a technique used to create starting original works.