A major force in the international studio glass movement, Klaus Moje has pushed the expressive and technical possibilities of glass for more than five decades. In this comprehensive, 30-year survey, the Museum of Arts and Design traces the progression of Moje’s work, from his early carved crystal glass pieces, to his intricately patterned vessels of layered glass, to his recent multi-panel fused works.
On view from Wednesday, April 29, 2009, through Sunday, August 16, 2009, Klaus Moje features 68 objects, including a new large-scale mural made specifically for this exhibition as well as many never-before-shown works from private collections. The exhibition illustrates the dominant shapes and aesthetics of the artist’s work and reflects his unparalleled contributions to the field of glass art.
“Throughout his career, Klaus Moje has combined superb craftsmanship with a highly refined aesthetic sense to create extraordinary works in glass,” states Holly Hotchner, the Nanette L. Laitman Director of the Museum of Arts and Design. “We are pleased to be presenting this extraordinary exhibition which provides a comprehensive look at Moje’s work and reveals the intricate processes and techniques behind his complex fused glass compositions.”
Moje’s work is an exploration of color—the kind of saturated, luminescent color that is only possible with glass—and his works of fused glass are elaborate, abstract arrangements of brilliant hues. He chose early in his career to work with standardized set of reductive shapes—the circle, the square—that invoke the historic form of a functional shallow bowl. In later years, he occasionally expanded his repertoire to include simple cylinders and boxes, and most recently, flat panels. Within this fairly rigid format, he has experimented with dramatic color contrasts and with geometric and abstract pattern to create a body of work that is exceptional in its richness and beauty.
Associate curator Jennifer Scanlan notes: ”People are drawn to Klaus’s work because of the interplay of vibrant colors, and are even more amazed when they realize the complexity and skill involved in the process.”
A highlight of the exhibition is a massive four-panel work, The Portland Panels: Choreographed Geometry, created especially for this exhibition. Composed of more than 22,000 hand-cut strips of glass fused together at the Bullseye Glass factory studios in Portland and totaling 74 1/2 x 218 in. this work is a stunning technical achievement. Over the course of a year, Moje collaborated with a team of glass technicians to overcome problems with the process of fusing glass at this monumental scale.
This work is indicative of the innovation and vitality that Moje has brought to the medium of glass throughout his career. While many glass artists have focused on glassblowing techniques, Moje has centered his practice on glass fusion, in which pieces of glass, often rods, strips, or canes, are arranged in a pattern and melted together in a kiln, to create a solid piece of glass.
Glass fusion has historically been very difficult to achieve with multiple hues, as different colors of glass have different rates of heating and cooling, and will crack if placed side by side. Moje worked with the Portland company Bullseye Glass to create new formulas for glass colors that were compatible. In this collaboration between science and art, Moje and Bullseye significantly expanded the capabilities of glass as an art medium.
In addition to including several of his recent works, the exhibition includes many of Moje’s very rare early pieces. It also provides a perspective on the artist’s changing aesthetic, as he experimented with new techniques, and a greater palette of colors became available to him. Some of the works are the result of specific events in the artist’s life: the Horizon series came immediately after his move from Germany to Australia and reflects his exposure to a dramatically different landscape, while the Impact series is a visceral reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. -- www.madmuseum.org
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