Artists: Simsa CHO, Anna GREY, Krista ISRAEL, Xiaosheng MA, Sunny WANG, Jenny WALSH, Hao WU, Jehoshua ROZENMAN.
Opening Date: 10 June 2022
Exhibition Date: 11 June – 9 July 2022
Curated by Jens PFEIFER, Tai XIAO, Selena YANG, exhibition REBORN is a special exchange exhibition in the 2022 UN International Year of Glass. It showcases works from 24 Dutch and international contemporary glass artists from ROG (Rays of Glass) International Art Project. UN International Year of Glass is the year to celebrate the important role that glass has played and will continue to play in society from technical, scientific, economic and cultural perspectives. The purpose of the exhibition Reborn is to explore the rebirth of the ancient material glass, which has undergone thousands of years of artistic inheritance, along with the development of modern technology, and interacts with emerging new media, which is endowed with new power of tradition and artistic innovation possibility. The exhibition will be in 3 phases between April and July 2022. It shows the achievements and directions of glass art education around the world and the influence of culture and tradition on the way an artist perceives and works. Glass is both an ancient material and a brand-new material. The natural form of light, transparency, refraction, reflection, etc., are all unique characters of glass material, which have incomparable advantages over other materials, giving artists a steady stream of inspiration. In this exhibition, we can see the different creativity of artists from all over the world, showing the unique spirit of glass. This is an exhibition without borders, and it also tries to explore the diversified development direction of glass art in the future.
Simsa CHO
Cho’s shoe-series of work is called “Shoerealism”. This series started with a Cinderella Beauty contest which he held with his friend who organized a music club event during his Gerrit Rietveld study period. Since then he has been working on this series for more than 30 years. During those years, hundreds of glass shoes with fantastic imagagination have been exhibited. A shoe is a very special object, it can symbolize a one’s dream, it can carry a one’s beauty, it can also represent a one’s journey, and Cho records his inspiration and life memory on this object. Cho applied also Japanese Urushi (Japanese lacquer) to his works that exhibited here.
Anna GRAY
“Over the last years I have focused on the extraordinary complexity and beauty of science. The phenomena of light, gravity and microscopic cellular structures can be more fully understood and revealed, using scientific methods. These then have the potential of contributing to new knowledge. The scientific perspective and approach makes me curious, why some topics remain questions and others get relatively quickly answered. I have translated these explorations and questions into sculptures. In my sculptures the inside of the glass spheres turns inwards, pushing into it’s own void. The space around the spheres is configured to appear to blend at intersecting corners, where the materials merge and coexist. The sculptures explore the space they occupy and the context in which they are positioned. I expose what is normally out of sight. Using cross- sections, magnification and transparency the objects show which is hidden and literally below the surface, creating new vantage points and conceptual understandings of how we understand the material world.”
Krista ISRAEL
Viewing Krista Israel’s works is like entering a story. The works are pleasing to the eye. Her works look realistic and transcend the real situation, mixing into the complex emotions of the creator and the viewer. The artist is particularly good at creating glass materials. Mix different types of materials, such as borosilicate glass, silicone, toy fillers, fabrics, false eyelashes, jewelry decoration, nylon rope and other materials in this work. She uses the natural properties of glass to express her thoughts and reflections on the world and people, responding to our need for happiness. At the same time, the combination of different techniques, materials and her ideas makes her work complex and interesting, full of humor.
Xiaosheng MA
Square dancing is a very common fitness activity in Chinese cities. It is often held spontaneously in large and small squares with the purpose of fitness. At the same time, because of the high-decibel and strong rhythm music accompaniment, it is often accompanied by noise issue. The collective form of this dance obscures the identity of the individual. An individual is often afraid to dance with high decibels in the middle of the square, but a group is often courageous enough. The artist uses the exotic animals of the ancient Chinese scriptures of Mountains and Seas to symbolize these neglected personal characteristics, which are thousands of people and thousands of faces.
Sunny WANG
This research of Sunny Wang explores the fluidity of molten glass and its translucent properties, and expresses these through calligraphic forms. Suchness-Ease engages with Chinese calligraphy and is framed by Buddhist practice (such as meditation). This research addresses how stillness and motion can be explored and presented together in a single work, integrating eastern and western understandings of glass as a material that was developed in Mesopotamia and was eventually brought to China over the Silk Road. Suchness-Ease creates a new, original visual language of glass calligraphy. Suchness-Ease is suspended in mid-air and by directing light on the pieces of floating glass, calligraphic shadows appear on the floor and wall giving rise to an object-shadow dualism within the same spatial framework. By suspending the installation in mid-air and casting light on the pieces of floating glass calligraphy, a fourth dimension is created in the interplay of shadows and glass. Although the inspirational genesis of each piece is developed from calligraphy, the installation is not intended to be literally read but rather to provide the viewer with the experience of being surrounded by an immersive environment of translucency, lightness and shadow. Suchness-Ease is the first glass installation inspired by Chinese calligraphy. The work explores light and shadow to fuse the essence of Chinese calligraphy with a primarily Western material. The work is a cross cultural visual and conceptual encounter that brings Chinese calligraphy, one of the foremost traditional aesthetic expressions in China, into a very contemporary format.
Jenny WALSH
Jenny Walsh uses glass in combination with other materials to explore the intersection between art, science and technology, studying the role of glass in scientific discovery, and using glass to communicate scientific concepts. She regularly collaborates with scientists, believing that working in an interdisciplinary environment opens up new perspectives and encourages wider audiences to participate in science. The piece is an interactive sculpture that reflects the neural pathways of the human body. The light sequences represent nerve impulses, which are connections of information that travel through the body. The work was influenced by the history of glass in scientific innovation and the role of electricity in re-stimulating neural pathways. The sculpture combines the inert and insulating properties of glass with the conductive properties of copper for certain electrical interfaces to enhance and enhance the functionality of the body.
Hao WU
Wu Hao’s glass painting depicts a seaside city called Brighton, and the audio file comes from street warning signals on the streets of Cork. The artist intercepted two situations in which he had the most frequent contact with himself, mixed the different rhythms and atmospheres of the two cities, and used a highly emotional attitude to allude to the strangeness and numbness in real life.
Jehoshua ROZENMAN
“As a sculptor, glass is my medium. I build complex forms situated in the realm of utopian and dystopian modernist architecture and machines. I discovered glass as the ideal medium to make my ideas tangible and since then, I have worked with this material conducting many experiments over the years. The forms evoke a state of ambiguity between both coming into being and falling away. The fragile and breakable character plays beautifully against glasses ability to last for thousands of years. Glass can be graceful, clean and transparent, but it can also show the darker sides of life with dangerously sharp edges and reused broken pieces. My ongoing experimentation with the medium means that I have no objection to cracks in my work, that is a necessary part of the process.”