The exhibition will present a series of mid-century glassware, featuring fine glass in unusual artistic shapes and various vibrant colors and pastel hues.
September 2 – November 18, 2022
Opening Preview: Thursday, September 1, 2022 | 6-8 PM
Installation view of ‘Transparency, Form and Color.’ Photo Courtesy of Artefact.Berlin.
August 16, 2022 (Berlin, Germany) – Artefact.Berlin announces its new exhibition dedicated to a curated selection of fine colorful glassware from the 1950‘s–1970‘s on view from September 2 – November 18, 2022. Transparency, Form and Color presents over 30 unique glass objects in various colors, shapes, and sizes, exhibited in honor of the International Year of Glass 2022, as proclaimed by the United Nations.
Alongside the glass objects, a large-scale unstretched sewed linen canvas by contemporary Berlin-based artist Nadine Schemmann echoes a similarly rooted appreciation of form and color. In her work, Schemmann explores the various layers reflective of human encounters – the spoken and the unspoken, giving these moments a lasting expression. The levels of transparency, the flow of color and its shape mirrors these interactions. In lost connection to mono, 2021, the vibrant green, yellow, and blue, added impulsively to the canvas, represent one of these interpersonal moments in time.
Inspired by the ways in which these two distinctive mediums employ form and color, cultural entrepreneur Anna Rosa Thomae, curates this assemblage as an exemplary symbiosis of art and design, as per Artefact.Berlin’s mission to support and present these intrinsically connected disciplines.
Nadine Schemmann, lost connection to mono, 2021 284 x 245 Oil paint, chlorine bleach and ink on sewed linen. Photo Courtesy of Nadine Schemmann.
Over 9000 years ago, the invention of glass by mixing three primary ingredients – silica sand, soda, and potash combined at high temperatures – created an extremely versatile material that with skillful craftsmen and artists reached new artistic heights. Today glassmaking holds an enviable place among art and design. Celebrating this shape-shifting material, the glass vases and objects on display are all mouth-blown and hand-crafted in delicate colorful glass to create sophisticated works of art conveying intricate craftsmanship and a sincere sense lightness. Distinctive for their color variations, ranging from lush Prussian/cornflower blue, cherry red and petrol to pale pastel colors, the pieces are shaped in novel fashion in graceful forms adding a modern sensibility and richness to traditional materials.
Selected objects in the exhibition can be attributed to Albin Schaedel, the internationally renowned glass artist from the Thuringian Forest in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Profoundly interested in experimenting and developing new techniques, Schaedel's affinity towards unconventional shapes demonstrated his excellent knowledge and skill of the versatile material. More specifically, he developed the "Schaedeltechnik,” a new technique of blowing vessels with a torch through an assembly technique producing unique pieces.
Installation view of red, blue and petrol-colored vases and objects. Photo Courtesy of Artefact.Berlin
Anna Rosa Thomae explains, “The subtle clarity and craft of the glass finds perfect harmony in Schemmann’s study of color and form.”
Predominantly working with large-format linen and various techniques, Nadine Schemmann’s work translates encounters, conversations, and moments in diverse shades on the canvas to engage in emotional interactions. The process involves dying or bleaching the material to then be covered with ink, oil paint or chlorine bleach, resulting in striking, but unexpected color paths forming organic, endlessly changeable edges on the linen canvas. With a desire to expand her color palette, Schemmann materializes feelings as different shades to create an expressive and sensory visual language translating encounters as the deepest and most honest form of dialogue. Reflecting the fragility of interpersonal relationships, Schemmann's paintings find their origin in the interstice that results when two people meet – crafting the space which remains free of color and that which is delimited by cut edges and seams. Only sometimes she stretches the linen fabrics on frames, never banishing them behind glass. Often, they hang freely in a space, or in nature, where they are exposed to wind and weather, where the color and fabric change with time. Just as interpersonal relationships cannot be preserved and made durable, Schemmann does not place this expectation on her paintings.
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Artefact.Berlin:
Established in December 2021, Artefact.Berlin is a gallery and project space prefiguring itself as an extension and complement to Thomae’s already reputed international cultural communications agency A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy, founded in 2014. Through a series of curated exhibitions, the project is rooted in Thomae’s ongoing commitment to promoting the interrelatedness between art, design and architecture. With a rich program of carefully selected exhibitions focusing on contemporary art and design, the space stands as an important reference point for art and design collectors and enthusiasts worldwide.
Rooted in the Schöneberg district’s distinct architectural heritage, Artefact.Berlin will continuously connect with local art and design professionals and general audiences alike through a dense program of multidisciplinary events, talks, and performances, once again fostering Berlin’s extensive and widely diverse cultural community and its visibility worldwide.
About Nadine Schemmann:
Nadine Schemmann is a contemporary German visual artist. She studied design and fashion at the Cologne International School of Design from 1997 - 2000 and at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2004 - 2006. In 2001 she moved to Berlin and worked as a freelance designer and internationally recognized fashion illustrator under her stage name Lulu until 2018.
Working with encounters in the broadest sense, her work arises from the need to translate encounters, conversations and moments to give them a lasting expression. In doing so, Schemmann recalls these moments and feelings as colors that then meet again on the canvas. Her own artistic practice is constantly evolving and presented in solo and group exhibitions. Most recently at Gutshaus Schwante, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Studio Berlin at Berghain, and TEXT-ile at Galerie Haverkampf & Leistenschneider, among others.
About Albin Schaedel:
Albin Schaedel (1905-1999) was an internationally renowned Thuringian glass artist – one of the most productive and influential glass artists of his time. Schaedel came from a family with a 200-year tradition in glass production. Following in his father’s footsteps, Schaedel joined the glass bead making workshop, began an apprenticeship in 1924 and was a journeyman with Edmund Müller in Neuhaus from 1927. After seven years of experience in glass making, he started working as an independent art glass blower and following his successful skills, in 1949 he was awarded the quality mark for handicrafts. By the end of the 20th century, he had to stop working in front of the glass flame for health reasons.
Works by Schaedel are held in prominent museum collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Arts, Sapporo.
Transparency, Form and Color is on view at Artefact.Berlin from September 2, 2022 — November 18, 2022.
Artefact.Berlin | Geisbergstraße 12, 10777 Berlin, Germany
Opening Hours:
Monday – Friday
10 – 6 PM and by appointment