Exhibition: Tomas Bata University Zlí

Since the foundation of the glass department of the Amsterdam Gerrit Rietveld Academy by Sybren Valkema in

1966 the works of the students of this department have gone through an enormous change. Starting out in the

realm of Studio Glass, developing both techniques and concepts, they ended up producing Fine Arts. The main

focus shifted from good craftsmanship, with an eye for perfection, to using glass as a medium for new and

challenging ideas. This line of thinking, combining experimental, innovative and interdisciplinary approaches in

order to stimulate the artistic and conceptual potential of the students has been at the basis of the Glass

Department. Attracting young artists from all over the world, the glass department of the Gerrit Rietveld

Academy enjoys a high reputation on an international level.

Under the supervision of Caroline Prisse - head of the Department since 2003 and reputable artist and curator -

students and their ideas have been challenged to an increasing extend to refine their visual language,

expanding their ideas with extensive research.

The works selected for the exhibition in the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, deal with these main issues. Geir Nustad (2

nd year Rietveld) for instance developed a new visual language in the Gerrit Rietveld Academy,

combining his experience as a craftsman, being trained in Kosta Glass center (Scandinavia’s most renowned Glass School), with new and refreshing ideas on how we experience Society. In his installation ‘Burned City’, he reflects on how we have come from a hunter -, collector society to a modern consumer society, surrounded by mass production. He created an abstract city, combining burned wood and several glass houses. He chose to burn the wood to make the contrast in the change in society stronger, the way we pollute the planet and poison our self. Several houses are made in the grail technique with petro glyphs (cave-inspired drawings) while others remain in clear or colored glass.

Artist: Geir Nustad Title: Burned City

Technique: Mold Blown Glass

Material: Glass, Recycled Wood

Year: 2010

Size: 150 x 185 x 40 cm

Artist: Geir Nustad Title: Burned City

Technique: Mold Blown Glass

Material: Glass, Recycled Wood

Year: 2010

Size: 150 x 185 x 40 cm

Anna Karolina Zajac (graduated Rietveld in July 2010) began her adventure with glass, studying at the Academy

of Fine Arts in her birth city Wroclaw, Poland. Developing her own vocabulary - working with a variety of

materials, including glass, plastic, and fabric– she creates colorful compositions, combining three-dimensional

objects with the notion of a two-dimensional painting. Expressing an inexplicable desire of different materials

and media to be together, she emerges kitsch of everyday life with a picturesque fairy tale view on life in the

twenty-first century.

Artist: Anna Zajac Material: Mixed Media Title: Hacking Forest (1), The Creation (2), Composition (3) Year: 2010 Technique: Mixed techniques Size: (1) 90 x 90 x 10 cm, (2) 100 x 90 x 10 cm, (3) 90 x 90 x 10 cm

Hacking Forest (1) Composition (3)

The investigation of Xandra Paijmans (graduated Rietveld in July 2010) is lead by the curiosity of what our

cultural heritage could look like in the future. How the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a

group or society, inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of

future generations will continue. She wonders if the cobalt blue, glass skull she made is natural or artificial,

what it says about time, about nature, and about art.

The relation between culture and beauty seems to be ever-changing trough out time. Immanuel Kant

considered the beauty of nature no different than the beauty in art, yet today we consider beauty a tool to

manipulate and to be manipulated. Xandra’s artistic research at the Rietveld Academy concerning the relation

between beauty and art has strengthened her belief that the strongpoint of human beings is our imaginary

mind, beauty being the metaphysical anchor point that guides our creative thinking.

Artist: Xandra Paijmans Title: Cowskull

Technique: Pâte de verre

Material: Glass

Year : 2010

Size: 28 x 12 cm

Lida Krul (2nd

Year Sandberg) deals with themes like fear, oppression and the longing for safety. In the

installation ‘Careful’, pictures - which are identifiable for everyone - travel a very slow route,

transporting, looping and destroying itself through a projector. This demolition is the result of a motor which is

stabbing the needle (of the machine) in a very careful and - at the same time irreversible - way through the

pictures. The ambiguity between lightness, the almost casual private images and the unavoidable dramatic

devastation, can be seen as a way in which melancholia - which comes from the tension between the longing

for true happiness and the inevitable failure - arises.

Artist: Lida Krul Title: Careful

Technique: Mechanic technique

Material: Slide projector, sewing

machine and mixed media

Year: 2010

Size: 80 x 80 x 50 cm

Marianne Lammersen (graduated Sandberg in July 2009) believes that in the past few years we've created a

world which is far beyond our own imagination. Due to high intelligence and other developments we can now

create instruments, machines and massive buildings in a way we literally exceed ourselves. Facades of glass,

enormous skyscrapers, concrete and asphalt for instance, are far away from our physical human body.

In her latest project ‘Through my looking glass’, she created an instrument which allows us to view the world in

a kind of soft way. Firm lines, specific shapes and colors acting as standard guidelines, are being vanquished by

spontaneous curves and a fusion of modern colors, creating a dreamy view on a reality that my body can no

longer relate to.

Artist: Marianne Lammersen

Title: Through my looking glass

Technique: Blown glass

Material: Camera, Glass object

Year: 2010

Size: +/- 160 cm high

Marie De Bruyn (2nd

year Rietveld) is interested, not only in how to make a work of art, but also in the effect it

can have on its surroundings once placed in a specific setting. She’s interested in how people relate to each

other in terms of space.

Everyone has a particular amount of personal space surrounding them. Depending on the person, it can either

be very large, allowing almost no one to come close to them, or very small, showing an open and social

attitude. How these differences manifest themselves are intriguing to her. Creating installations, including

people and sculptures she suggests interaction between the viewer and the work or setting as subtle as

possible, leaving room for discussion. Her work ends up being about an idea, an imaginary space in your own

mind, playing with your perception.

In this ‘Round up space’ she has molded a hot mass of glass around and trough an opening in a wooden board.

The in- and outside of the hollow white shape are formed and deformed by their surrounding space. The

borders of the shape are confined only by the temperature of the glass and the size of the opening of the

wooden board, allowing it to grow in a natural and at the same time controlled manner.

Artist: Marie De Bruyn Title: Round up space

Technique: Mold blown glass

Material: White colored glass, Wood

Year: 2010

Size: 1.60 x 1.20 m (glass shape: 55 x 30 cm)

Artist: Marie De Bruyn Title: Round up space

Technique: Mold blown glass

Material: White colored glass, Wood

Year: 2010

Size: 1.60 x 1.20 m (glass shape: 55 x 30 cm)

Marc Barreda (1st

year Sandberg) was born in Peru and raised in the northeast of the United States. After

obtaining a Bachelors degree in Biology, he began working in sculpture and started exploring the material of

glass. For nearly ten years he trained with a number of international glass artists before settling in Amsterdam

to pursue his master's degree at the Sandberg Institute.

“Horror Vacui”, is an investigation on how to make change inside a vacuum. Talking about his work he notes:

‘To be heard, the voice needs a medium through which to travel. Like all sounds the voice can travel a certain

distance through stone or wood or metal or water. However, in practice the most pervasive medium of choice

is gas, atmosphere, “the air”. Air is all around us here. When I whisper in your ear or shout across the room

my voice is travelling through or rather via the air. Remove all the air and I am silenced. I am silenced and my

blood boils.’

M.B.: ‘Institutions are defined by their structure and organization. While a sturdy structure can be a strong

foundation it can also and often does, lead to inflexibility. In the beginning of my experiences within the Dutch

education "system" I challenged my dissatisfaction by trying to invoke a constructive dialogue with the faculty

and staff of the Academy. I was silenced. Through various methods, my voice was quelled, smothered,

suppressed. This piece is a reaction to that experience, an effort to show that even in a vacuum our voice can

still exist and eventually, because nature abhors a vacuum, our voice will be heard.’

Artist: Marc Barreda Title: Horror Vacui

Technique: Blown glass

Material: Mixed media

Year: 2010

Size: Variable Dimensions

Ryoko Sato (graduated Sandberg in July 2006), born in 1972, lives and works in Antwerp. In her piece “The Kiss

and the Relic” she rethinks her daily experiences.

“The Kiss and the Relic”

I observe, remember and collect, my daily experiences.

Some are objects.

Others are thoughts.

Some are long distance memories.

Glass serves as a capsule to enclose such treasures and transform seemingly insignificant matters to personal

and precious objects.

A simple act, skinning, transforms a being into a beautiful yet grotesque image.

An act, which seems cruel to unfamiliar eyes, is in fact an act carried out everyday.

We just do not see it. It is effectively hidden from our everyday life.

A pest, destine to die in my studio was rescued and killed and skinned by my hands.

You cannot kill for art, one says.

You can kill because it is a pest, one says.

But, what you did was wrong, another says.

I do not have an answer, but the skin is enshrined as an ode to the justice/injustice of my, everyone’s act.

Artist: Ryoko Sato Title: The Kiss – edition 10 + artist proof

Technique: Mixed techniques

Material: Glass, found object and dried mouse skin

Year: 2004

Size: 14x 14cm

Artist: Ryoko Sato Title: The Relic

Technique: Mixed techniques

Material: Glass, found object and dried mouse skin

Year: 2009

Size: 73.5 × 14 cm

“The Kiss and the Relic” is a collaboration with Eric van den Boom (photograph) and Jeroen Maes (relic)