Next week, The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung inMunich,Germany, will open a new exhibition of glass and mixed media objects revolving around the theme “In the Name of Love.”
Since the non-profit’s founding eleven years ago, The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung has strived to promote a greater understanding of glass as an art among artists, critics, and spectators alike.
Alexander Tutsek himself passed away this last September at the age of eighty-four. Born under the thumb of the Soviet-controlledRomania, Tutsek escaped as a young adult intoWestern Europeand went on to have an exalted career as a journalist, a leader of an international refractory company, and a philanthropist of arts and engineering. His co-founder and wife, Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, continues her work as chairwoman of the organization.
The “In the Name of Love” exhibition will display thirty works from twenty-six artists located around the globe, including theU.S.A.,Israel,Japan, andNew Zealand. The exhibition desires to explore, in the words of the press release, the “many facets of love”: love as a desirable emotion and a painful one; as visible love and invisible; as requited love and unrequited; as love of a partner, a child, a homeland, or an idea.
“In the Name of Love” plays with the duality of both its subject and its chosen medium. Tanya Lyons and Mathieu Grodet’s “Drift” (pictured above) dwells in the paradoxes of being freed and being bound: even as the glass wings spread wide as though to take flight, the buckles of the leather straps remind viewers of the creature’s bondage to the earth. “Women’s Work Corset 68,” contributed by Susan Taylor Glasgow, also presents the duality of love managing to both liberate yet confine its receivers, of glass managing to both be fragile yet endure for years.
Wine glasses and perfume bottles spring to mind when considering traditional glass objects associated with romance. However, Luke Jerram’s “HIV” (pictured right) and Silvia Levenson’s “Everyone Has Somebody But Me” – a replica of an virulent HIV cell, and a row of perfume/cologne bottles defaced with their title’s message, respectively – ask us to reckon with the idea of love isolating rather than connecting people. Their antithesis can be found in “Balance of my Mind” by Masayo Odahashi, a glass sculpture of two humans relaxing back-to-back, or in “Teddy-Teddy” by Janusz Walentynowicz, a cast glass mould of two teddy bears with their paws resting against each other in simple, lasting companionship.
The new exhibition will open next week on February 7th and close November 7th, 2012. For those who cannot attend, a publication of the exhibition is available for sale from the foundation.
IF YOU VISIT:
“In the Name of Love”
February 7, 2012 – November 7, 2012
Tuesday and Wednesday 10AM-2PM, Thursday 2PM-5:30PM
The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung
Website: http://www.atutsek-stiftung.de/en