Attitudes and Processes – Artistic Glass from the Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw

We are familiar with glass as an element of everyday life. It is very common in modern architecture, an irreplaceable feature of our private and public spaces. However, this is only the utilitarian role of glass and on this occasion there will be an opportunity to get to know another aspect of this material with its centuries-long history of craftsmanship and abundant creative potential.

The objective of the exhibition prepared at the Modern Art Gallery of Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz was to convince visitors of the potential of glass. This institution invited the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass of Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw. “Attitudes and Processes – Artistic Glass from the Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw” is the title of this exhibition. The collection of glass objects by the Chair’s faculty was prepared for this exhibition. It reveals the phenomenon of artistic glass as a part of modern art and a discipline richly that is represented in our country by many artists. The exhibition includes almost 50 works by 19 participants. Artistic glass is a discipline characterised by a particularly close relationship between the material and technique applied. Here, we can find works made using the traditional glass blowing method, welded and fused in electric furnaces, polished, painted, matted, combined with ceramics and stone, created with a gas jet and made from glass fibre. The artists keep confronting the material within the creative process and the process itself will be displayed to the viewers at this exhibition.

Glass artists from Wrocław ask aesthetic and formal questions and the results are variable – figurative works and abstract sculptures, installations and relief images, shimmering structures and geometric monoliths, functional associations and organic inspirations.

The exhibition space of the museum provides visitors with an opportunity to learn, observe and compare different artistic attitudes related to glass art, represented by artists involved in the Chair of Glass of Wrocław Academy. The subject of the exhibition involves the presentation of artistic attitudes and processes which are representative for academic glass art, as well as displaying the process of development and transformation in Wrocław Chair of Glass. In the context of this year’s 70^th anniversary of the Academy of Art and Design, the presentation of modern artistic achievements and current trends is matched by an exhibition of historic works by Zbigniew Horbowy, Ludwik Kiczura and Henryk Wilkowski to illustrate the transformation of “Wrocław school of glass”. Thus, this exhibition will explore a broad range of the terra incognita of modern art.

The exhibition will be open from the 30^th of June until the 11^th of September 2016