Special Contributions

Beautiful Glass Art or Not Beautiful Glass Art
— Looking back on past award-winners —（５／９）

The Grand Prize winner at the second International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa was one of OGIDA Katsuya’s early works. The title of this container-shaped object is “Curious Dream”. This work was created by pâte de verre and has an unconscious quality which doesn’t follow the traditional esthetic sense attached to the material of glass. However, OGIDA Katsuya’s later glass works are a series of objects of mounted light, capturing characteristics which are unique to the material, and opening up a new world of glass sculpture. After the third exhibition in 1988, I think the most impressive works in the exhibitions of 1990, 1992 and 1995 were those by Dana ZAMECNIKOVA from the Czech Republic. While many works competed in the unique beauty of glass sculpture, her works were of a different nature. The work entitled “Portrait”, made by laminating many transparent painted glass sheets, seemed to hollow out a complicated portrait of psychological expression. It was unmistakably an idiosyncratic painting on a support of glass. There is a style of glass painting in the Czech Republic, like Czech glass sculpture, which shows a consciousness of expression in contemporary art. It can be said that glass was a favored substrate material for Czech artists.