Fragile – Alles aus Glas

Glass - border areas of the sculptural

People have been fascinated by glass ever since they started working with it. In the diversity of its properties - viscous and crystalline, fragile and resistant at the same time - it presents itself as a material that poses immense artistic challenges. It is only in today's increasingly close co-operation between artists and renowned glass manufacturers that this exquisite material seems to have become docile. At the same time, glass invites metaphorical charges and spiritual interpretations. The book and exhibition therefore closely follow the questions of the artistic emancipation of this material since the 19th century as well as the "cult of the crystalline", which was cultivated, for example, by the visionary architectural fantasies of the Glass Chain around Bruno Taut and Hans Scharoun. The struggle of the "glass designers" for the ornament-free form, as championed by Peter Behrens and Adolf Loos, for example, is presented just as vividly. Marcel Duchamp's "Large Glass" (1915), which was regarded as enigmatic, also exerted a major influence on 20th century art. In the destructive acts of the politicised art of the 1960s, it is a constantly emerging point of reference, and the works of Barry LeVa, Tony Cragg and Bethan Huws, for example, are an expression of a debate about Marcel Duchamp's "glass" legacy that continues to the present day. Finally, the glass works by Ernst Franz Vogelmann Prize winner Thomas Schütte open up a polyphonic contemporary spectrum with works by Christoph Brech, Tony Cragg, Ayşe Erkmen, Louisa Clement, Luciano Fabro, Gabriella Gerosa, Asta Gröting, Mona Hatoum, Marta Klonowska, Isa Melsheimer, Cornelia Parker, Gerda Schlembach and Timm Ulrichs.

Exhibitions:
Municipal Museums Heilbronn / Kunsthalle Vogelmann, 18/12/2021 - 15/4/2022
Ahlen Art Museum, 19/6 - 16/10/2022