Opening: Disparate works brought together “In the Name of Love” at The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung

Tanya Lyons and Mathieu Grodet, Drift, 2010. Flameworked glass, leather straps, stainless steel. photo: hans-joachim becker. courtesy: alexander tutsek-stiftung.

Timed for the month when Valentine’s Day is celebrated, The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung in Munich, Germany, will open a new exhibition of glass and mixed media objects revolving around the theme of love in early February. Titled “In the Name of Love,” it will feature 30 works by 26 artists including Silvia Levenson, Christina Bothwell, Jose Chardiet, Luke Jerram, Dafna Kaffeman, Marta Klonowska, Sibylle Peretti, Elizabeth Swinburne, and Lino Tagliapietra.

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. Founder Alexander Tutsek died in September at the age of eighty-four. Born under the thumb of the Soviet-controlled Romania, Tutsek escaped as a young adult into Western Europe and 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 and organizer of exhibitions such as this one.

The “In the Name of Love” exhibition will display works from an international roster of artists from around the globe, including the U.S.A., Israel, Japan, and New 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.

Luke Jerram, HIV, 2010. Blown glass, flameworked. photo: hans-joachim becker. courtesy: alexander tutsek-stiftung.

“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 replica of an virulent HIV cell (pictured right) and Silvia Levenson’s “Everyone Has Somebody But Me” – a row of perfume/cologne bottles defaced with their title’s message – 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 7^th and close November 7^th, 2012. For those who cannot attend, a publication of the exhibition is available for sale from the foundation.

—Anna Tatelman