Glass has been a part of our lives forever in its natural form and for some six thousand years in its manufactured form. If not broken, it preserves the fullness of its original splendour and guard its centuries of secrets. Together with its seemingly inaccessible mystery, glass has the qualities to make it perform a complex role: as a raw material integral to and by now indispensable for our everyday lives, it never ceases to work for us mundanely – like a quiet companion – with its presence spanning from our tables, buildings and machines to the elegant world of exhibition halls, and utilising the results of silicate research reaching into space. Glass is a material that, living in symbiosis with light from the Universe, is able to be reborn in every one of its earthly moments: it has the ability to continuously change. Glass artists explore the questions of human existence and present it to us by eliciting help from transcendental light, seeking its cooperation. Their messages written in glass, precise statements moulded into form are complex, adventurous and trying enterprises, at great variance from the traditional branches of art. It is in this spirit that contemporary Hungarian glass art has been looking for its place, bit by bit winning over curious and adept audiences in the areas of sculpture, painting, mural art, architecture, design, conservation and restoration. The inimitable qualities of glass, its multi-faceted appearance, multiple research areas and by now indisputable role in the arts have proved sufficient to submit the international recommendation, indorsed by Hungary too, which led to 2022 being declared the International Year of Glass at the United Nations’ General Assembly on 18 May in 2021. We are celebrating, greeting the festival of glass among the long-standing walls of the Műcsarnok, allowing an insight into what we deem as historic moments in the responsible and innovative art of glass-forming and exhibiting the most recent works of contemporary artists expressing themselves through glass in the areas of design, applied arts and fine arts and beyond.
Eleonóra Balogh
Noémi Ferenczy Award laureate glass artist