The Heat Forever Yearns Away

The quest is for human beings one of the motivating forces for the spiritual, intellectual and technical development of humankind. The quest for that which is distant, for the other, for freedom, truth, new or strong feelings, transcendental moments, as well as for happiness are the essential motifs that determine life and life’s journey.

The exhibition title The Heat Forever Yearns Away, taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s East-West Divan, expresses humankind’s constant quest very poetically. Glass, a material that is not yet well known in modern art, conveys this theme in a very special way.

Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek: “Although glass is something commonplace for
us – we can hardly imagine our lifestyle today without glass – it has had something very magical throughout the millennia. Glass is sensuous. Depending on how it has been made, glass feels completely smooth and cool, it can be rough and can injure, or it can be as soft as velvet.”

Compared to other media such as ceramics, metal, stone, synthetics, or the virtual images that dominate modern art increasingly, glass has a special quality, an additional dimension – its optical depth. Alternating between clear, opaque, translucent, colored, cut, and uncut glass, artists have infinite possibilities to allow different perceptions and perspectives.”

The exhibition title indicated the long way that art with glass had taken in the last few decades since leaving behind functional forms such as vases or bowls. Subjects like this would have been unthinkable just a little while ago. Today’s tendencies show that not only have artists accepted glass as a medium but glass has also developed into an independent form of art. The objects make multilayered statements today. Subtle, abstract, transcendental, or mythological ideas and subjects are important. The individual objects in the exhibition gave rise to inner stories and illustrated that artists are venturing into new thematic and emotional realms.