CZECH GLASS | FRAGILE
{Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová Michaela Spružinová

Michaela Spružinová

She graduated from the Secondary School of Glassmaking in Kamenický Šenov, then continued her studies at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem at the Faculty of Art and Design, first at the Glass Studio of associate professor Ilja Bílek, and later she also studied curatorial work at the same university. During her studies, she completed several internships abroad, specifically at the Pécs Tudományegyet University in Hungary in the Studio of Classical Painting, in the Studio of Glass and Ceramics at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and then as a curator at the Gallery Outlet-Istanbul. After graduating, she remained at her faculty as an assistant professor at the Glass Studio with doc. Ilja Bílek and since 2010 she has been working at the Faculty of Multimedia Communications of Tomas Bata University in Zlín in the Glass Design Studio with prof. Petr Stanický. At the same time, she is developing her professional experience as a curator at the Deska Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. It is remarkable not only because it was created by the reconstruction of public toilets, but it also attracts attention mainly thanks to the unmissable exhibition program, which is clearly defined and is different from the official art scene in the city.

Spružinová uses all these diverse experiences in her work. She has several solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic and Germany, and the number of group exhibitions she has participated reaches almost fifty. She is a representative of the young generation of Czech glassmakers with a distinctive and original author's style, both in terms of ideas and material processing. She uses a completely unique method, where she pulls the threads from the shards herself, bends them in the furnace, and then composes 3D figurative objects from them. This original but demanding procedure arose spontaneously during her improvisation on one of her residencies.

 

She is extremely thoughtful and dedicates herself to glass in a broader context and in greater depth than usual. The installations she creates are new and fresh in terms of their concept. They address the current social issues and represent a very personal statement of the author on certain topics. They almost always provoke a strong response, sometimes even fuss, or even demands for removal. They are slightly provocative, sometimes even sarcastic, but at the same time they are funny, if we can look at them with some exaggeration. However, the intention of the author is by no means to provoke, her goal is to critically reflect on consumer society, the world of contemporary pop culture, to draw attention to the paradoxes of fashion trends and the boundless obsession with artificial perfection and flawlessness of the physical body. She also often works with her own body, especially with those parts that enjoy the most attention when judging female beauty. This creates original stories about beauty brought to extremes. Her statements oppose established clichés, prejudices and taboos and push the boundaries of perception of what is generally considered perfect, both in the glass itself and in the commonly perceived concept of the ideal of beauty.

For the exhibition Czech Glass, Quo Vadis?! She created a new installation that originally connects two life situations - her maternity leave and the period of pandemic restrictions in which we all lived. Due to them, Spružinová was forced to work under very limited conditions in terms of technology and the work was created only using a burner and a small furnace, in addition to glass waste. A series of her objects reflect body care during the pandemic. She was inspired by Kim Kardashian's set of "hot body at home" exercises, which " will help keep your body sexy even when you can't go to the fitness centre ...” The bizarre combination of human anatomy based on these exercises are a kind of relaxed reflection of the global pandemic crisis.

“The objects are covid-specific, thanks to the home body building and the situation in which they were created. As part of the lockdown, I was forced to create works so that I would be able to make them at home. It was not possible to rent a studio with a large-format furnace or a glassworks, where I would produce a semi-finished product of sticks, which I would then connect in the furnace. So circumstances forced me to improvise. I set up a small workshop at home with a gas burner and a ceramic furnace with an inner diameter of 35 cm. In a nearby junk shop, I found a special material which was brought from the bankrupt glassworks. I carefully processed the glass, which lay unchanged for several years, into components. I then arranged them into compositions in a furnace in a very lengthy way, for subsequent shaping using a mould. The limit of this collection of objects was clearly defined by the format of the furnace. Therefore, they are composed of several parts. They are stitched with coloured wire like filigree or lace. "