Play with Glass – European Glass Festival in Wrocław – 06.10.2014 – 19.10.2014
The festival’s main exhibition: Animal Planet – curator: Anita Bialic
Wrocław – 13.10.2014 – 31.10.2014 – Wrocław Główny Station – Session Room
Łódź – 15.11.2014 – 13.12.2014 – City Art Gallery – Re: Medium Gallery – ul. Piotrkowska 113
Jelenia Góra – 31.01.2015 – 29.03.2014 – the Karkonosze Museum
Lucian Butucariu – Romania; Ned Cantrell – Great Britain/Denmark; Sigrún and Ólöf Einarsdóttir – Iceland; Shige Fujishiro – Japan/Germany; Jesse Günther – Ireland; Karen Lise Krabbe – Denmark; Andrzej Kucharski – Poland; Martine Luttringer – France; Martin Muranica – Slovakia; Inge Panneels – Belgium/Great Britain; Wojciech Peszko – Poland; Mare Saare – Estonia; Janine Claudia Schimkat – the Netherlands; Stanisław Sobota – Poland; Ivana Šrámková – the Czech Republic; Margit M. Tóth – Hungary; Małgorzata ET BER Warlikowska – Poland
In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale the wolf devours the grandma, and then Red Riding Hood. In Janusz Styczeń’s poem the grandma is the big bad wolf from whom Red Riding Hood flees.
In the animal world might makes right; it is a ruthless, blood-thirsty struggle for survival. The animal kills in search of food and to defend its territory.
“Might makes right” increasingly governs man’s behavior. Violence and aggression have become widespread in today’s world. Modern technology is killing our sensitivity. The bloody execution of American reporter James Foley was seen by millions of people around the globe through the Internet.
We protest the killing of animals, and we make a public spectacle out of the death of a man. We are becoming more and more refined in our cruelty. And increasingly indifferent toward violence and death.
Animal Planet. A Planet of People. Our shared contemporary world.
Anita Bialic
About Festival
A fantastic initiative. A cosmic atmosphere and close encounter of the third kind with art that brings the whole family together. BRAVO… Viewing this exhibition you can forget about the problems all around us. It is splendid… Pleasing to the eye and soothing to the soul. A beautiful exhibition..
Will Animal Planet, the main exhibition of the 3rd edition of the Play with Glass European Glass Festival, stoke the same enthusiasm that UFO Unique Form Object did last year at Wrocław’s Main Station?
Surprise and delight at the fact that glass is such an unusual material, that it creates so many opportunities for artistic expression, are the finest rewards for the enormous amount of work and effort we put into preparing the festival events.
The Play with Glass European Glass Festival is not only the main exhibition, featuring eighteen artists from fourteen European countries (last year it was sixteen participants from twelve countries), hosted once more by the 19th-century Wrocław Central Train Station. It is also exhibitions featuring Polish and European artists who create one-of-a-kind objects made of or using glass, an international seminar devoted to the European art of glass at the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, meetings with artists…
The festival will also include the Glass Display Case project, an Open House at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, a Studio Open House for glass artists from Wrocław and Lower Silesia, Wrocław – A Microcosmos of Events – art workshops for “difficult young people” and families with children, a walk through Wrocław on the “glass architecture route,” and a Glass Bus.
The Glass Display Case project was set in motion by students from the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław as a joint project. Entering the “living” space of the city with their projects, they could see the direct impact of their work on the viewer. The store or cafe display windows on busy streets provide significantly greater opportunities for public exposure than a gallery or museum.
Glass in Wrocław’s Urban Space is a totally new project, for there had never before been literature available on Wrocław’s glass architecture. We have described 54 of Wrocław’s glass architectural works. Fourteen of these are on Wrocław’s first “glass route.” We decided to bring them to light and make an inventory of the glass artwork in the city’s public buildings and churches, in its squares and streets… We had to do some meticulous detective work to track down the creators of these glass works of art and check all the information they passed down. We hope that the “Wrocław Old Town Glass Route” will be one of the most important attractions in Wrocław, the “city of glass.”
The Play with Glass European Glass Festival is generating increasing interest in Wrocław and Lower Silesia, and also throughout Poland and abroad. The enormous popularity of the material we post on Facebook and the numerous comments we receive from around the world have convinced us that we are doing vital work in popularizing glass as an important medium in contemporary art.
Anita Bialic, Kazimierz Pawlak
The Play with Glass – European Glass Festival project, designed by Anita Bialic, BB Gallery and Professor Kazimierz Pawlak, the EugeniuszGeppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, was included in Wrocław’s application for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016.
EGF is organized annually by the BB Gallery and the Fly with Art Foundation in close cooperation with the Municipality of Wrocław, the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design and the Association of Polish Artists and Designers in Wrocław.
www.facebook.com/EuropeanGlassFestival
Programme: www.europeanglassfestival.com/en/festiwal-2014