Four Glass Masters

Four Glass Masters Latchezar Boyadjiev Peter Bremers Matthew Curtis Lucy Lyon

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Four Glass Masters Latchezar Boyadjiev Peter Bremers Matthew Curtis Lucy Lyon May 20 - June 18, 2022

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com

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LewAllen Galleries presents an exhibition of recent works of studio glass by four internationally recognized glass artists.

While the representational, narrative glass of Lucy Lyon finds inspiration the personal gravity of small moments, Latchezar Boyadjiev’s glass forms are regarded for their undulating, fluid planes of color that echo the human body in a far more oblique way.

Working more abstractly, the dynamic glass of Matthew Curtis draws upon an ongoing interest in fragmented architectural or biological form, where Peter Bremers’s dreamlike ethereal shapes recall a sense of exploration in his softly hued prisms.

Just as glass itself has the ability to encapsulate, radiate, consume, or transform light, this exhibition initiates elemental dialogues between four voices that explore the conceptual, political, and expressive possibilities of glass sculpture.

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Lucy Lyon’s sublime color choices and understated forms infuse her work with a powerful and intimate sense of empathy as she explores themes of interaction and individuality. While glass sculpture can often be symbolist or formalist, Lyon’s usage of the figure willfully rejects this distance: alluding to contemporary urbanity and youthful independence, her exquisitely wrought figures encourage private reflection.

With exquisite detail, Lyon’s cast-glass subjects capture nuances of the human form with subtlety, grace, and a strong narrative impulse. Many of her evocative works include figures in settings that evoke built environment, interior spaces, or with an emphasis on human interaction—all, however, express metaphors for various states of mind.

Lucy Lyon Aesthete, 2021 cast glass and fabricated steel 26.5 x 11.5 x 15 inches

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Lucy Lyon Wave Length, 2022 cast glass and bronze 10 x 20 x 7.5 inches

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Lucy Lyon Woman with Turban, 2022 cast glass and fabricated steel 16.5 x 14 x 8.5 inches

Lyon’s cast-glass subjects capture nuances of the human form with subtlety, grace, and a strong narrative impulse. “Lyon has mastered her technique,” art critic Leanne Goebel writes. “[She] presents compelling narratives about the human condition—the interaction and/or lack thereof among humans pressed together in urban settings, poignantly explored through the simple communication of evocative body movements.”

Each piece contains an atmosphere open to personal interpretation and suggestive of a narrative or story—settings Lyon describes as “places where one can be in a private space while in public.”

Lucy Lyon Young Woman Standing, 2010 cast glass and fabricated steel 38 x 14 x 10 inches

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Lucy Lyon Dance, 2018 cast glass, powder coated aluminum, walnut & plate 23 x 14 x 22 inches

One of Australia’s most esteemed glass sculptors, Matthew Curtis’ masterful glass sculptures are imbued with interlocking networks of rhythm, harmony, and shining color. Drawing upon a fascination with both architectural and biological shapes, Curtis’ exquisitely-crafted geometric forms evoke fragmented space through segmented patterning and softly glowing colors.

Combining unlike materials and developing his own color tints, Curtis is known for his inventive technique in the combination of glass, colored oxide, and steel, as well as his concerted effort to broaden both the visual and formal possibilities of glass art.

Matthew Curtis Section Multi, 2018 blown and fused glass, stainless steel 11.75 x 17.25 x 7.75 inches

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Matthew Curtis Periphery Red and Grey, 2021 blown and constructed tinted furnace glass 21 x 12.5 x 4 inches

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Matthew Curtis Periphery Blue Spring Green blown and constructed tinted furnace glass 21 x 12 x 3.5 inches

Matthew Curtis Section Pair Neo Blue Olive Gold, 2018 blown and fused glass, stainless steel 13.5 x 35 x 7 inches 16

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In creating his complex glass works, Matthew Curtis draws our attention to the elemental details of our surroundings: the organic within the architectural and the patterns hidden within the natural world. With visual motifs that reference growth, order, and strength, Curtis’ forms allude to structural geometry at all scales, from cellular tissue to vast architectural space.

His dynamic sculptures play with texture and transparency in layers of cascading, radiant colors, referencing the built world through the material language of steel and blown glass. Upon close inspection, each finely considered blown-glass element is similar but not identical to the next, revealing Curtis’ careful articulation of form through lyrical, rhythmic curve and contour.

Matthew Curtis Intersect Blue Green, 2018 blown and fused glass, stainless steel 16.5 x 25.5 x 9.5 inches

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Matthew Curtis Incline Red and Gold blown and fused glass, stainless steel 15 x 15.75 x 4.5 inches

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Matthew Curtis Xylem blown and fused glass, stainless steel 32 x 20 x 5.5 inches

Over the course of his 30-year career, Dutch artist Peter Bremers has become known internationally as a true master of kiln-cast glass, employing reductive forms that arouse his viewers’ sensitivity to space and perception in graceful, nonverbal poems about light, color and form. In his art, Bremers investigates the symbolic and metaphoric possibilities inherent in matters of volume and space, as well as the capacity of glass to hold light. Bremers finds particular interest in the distinguishing characteristic of glass as a sculptural media: its transparency, which allows viewers to look not only at its surface, but also within and through it.

In much of his early work, Peter Bremers employed oblique references to landscape inspired by his travels around the world. These include his 2001 series, Icebergs & Paraphernalia, inspired by journeys he undertook to the Arctic and Antarctic in sailing vessels; and his Canyon & Deserts series from 2009, which was characterized by rich, earth-hued glass and angular structures, and evoked the awe-inspiring landscape formations of the American Southwest.

Peter Bremers Wind's Lament, 2014 kiln-cast glass 19 x 12 x 4 inches

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Peter Bremers Rim Rock, 2014 kiln-cast glass 14 x 12 x 3 inches

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Peter Bremers Brins Mesa (Canyons & Deserts 10-45), 2010 kiln-cast glass 17 x 13 x 4 inches

Peter Bremers High Line Trail, 2011 kiln-cast glass 22 x 13 x 4 inches

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In his newer works, Peter Bremers has pared back to the essentials of his sculptural language, moving into a formal universe of symbol and metaphor.

Often he incorporates an inner space, which occurs when a glass form has both an outer shell and an inner shell. Here, this creates the impression of liminal, incorporeal forms nestled within enveloping, colored light. Our observation of that inner space—defined by the texture of the glass as well as the reflections of its environment and the light that illuminates it—offers us a glimpse into a universe governed by its own mysterious laws of physics and perception.

Other works initiate the implicit sensations not just of solidity, but also of various other states of matter that alternately cradle and morph into each other. In their evocation of motion or stillness, suspension or weight, Bremers’ sculptures reflect his overriding interest in the psychological and emotional response to form or atmosphere.

Peter Bremers Inverted Space, 2017 kiln-cast glass 16.75 x 19.75 x 13 inches

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Peter Bremers Endless Red Space, 2019 kiln-cast glass 9 x 8 x 11 inches

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Peter Bremers Connected Space, 2017 kiln-cast glass 26 x 14 x 7.5 inches

Peter Bremers Cosmic Gold Space, 2019 kiln-cast glass 8.25 x 12 x 8.25 inches

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Silver Surfer, 1994 acrylic on canvas 39.75 x 55 inches

The capacious yet graceful glass forms of Latchezar Boyadjiev oscillate between the tangible and the intangible, evoking the sensual undulations of the human figure as composed in fluid fragments of color marked by slight shifts in depth and tone. As art critic James Yood writes, “His forms take on rich volumetric shape, never literally echoing the shapes of the body, but amplifying or deleting them in what all together becomes a kind of threedimensional caress.”

Latchezar Boyadjiev Torso IX, 2014 cast glass 18 x 12 x 3.5 inches

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Latchezar Boyadjiev Harmony, 2019 cast glass 20 x 78 x 5 inches

Latchezar Boyadjiev Adagio, 20118 cast glass 36 x 23 x 5 inches

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Latchezar Boyadjiev Enjoyment, 2007 cast glass 36 x 25 x 5 inches

Working monochromatically, Boyadjiev uses light to describe the sweeping contours of the glass as it reflects and refracts. In a deeply poetic and yet technically formalist language, his glass is unmistakably contemporary. “I want my work to become a part of modern architecture and a contemporary environment,” he says; “to reflect the era in which we live.”

Latchezar Boyadjiev Torso XI, 2015 cast glass 36 x 22 x 6 inches

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Untitled (WW014-04), 2004 acrylic on paper image: 38.13 x 20.63 paper: 41.75 x 23 inches framed: 47.75 x 28.88 inches

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Latchezar Boyadjiev Freedom II, 2013 cast glass 25 x 40 x 6 inches

These artists, on top of their international and critical acclaim, have work in countless significant public and private collections on four continents including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the National Gallery of Australia, the Eskisehir Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Arts Museum in Turkey, The White House Fine Art Collection, the Kunstgewerbe Museum in Berlin, and many more. This specially curated LewAllen exhibition offers serious collectors a special opportunity to acquire iconic examples of these extraordinary artists’ works.

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com © 2022 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 46 Artwork © Each Artist