On Sunday, 13 April, at 7 p.m., the Boto Theatre in Sopot will host the opening of the exhibition Glassiers.
The exhibition Glassiers is about glass – as a boundary, as a mirror, as a window to the world. The paintings on show come from two series: Windows and Heavenscrapers. They explore the relationship between intimacy and public space, everyday life and the professional world.
The Windows series is a pictorial tale of urban walks through the residential neighbourhoods of The Hague. It is the result of observing the uncovered windows of Dutch houses, a recording of fragments of someone else’s reality – intimate and yet exposed to public view.The window here is the boundary between private and foreign. It is a place where gazes meet, place of confrontation with what is outside. In this case, the situation of looking in the windows is also an expression of the emigration experience – the observer, although sees, remains outside of what he looks at, as always an outsider. Voyeurism is a manifestation of curiosity, perhaps longing, but at the same time it involves a violation of boundaries.
The Heavenscrapers series takes us into the world of cold, corporate architecture. The glass of the skyscrapers both reveals and conceals. It creates the illusion of transparency and at the same time it makes it easier to maintain control. Reflecting the surrounding world, skyscrapers lose their materiality. They become symbols of capitalist abstraction – speculation, credit money, the so-called FIRE economy [finance, insurance, real estate]. This series is part of the doctoral thesis Is it possible not to work?, which investigates the position of manin the contemporary labour system.
The title Glassiers refers to interpreting architecture in the context of glass – used in the windows of houses and in the facades of office buildings. It is a painterly analysis of the window and its multiple meanings. It speaks of the contradictory directions of human desires – balancing between disclosure and concealment, between dependence and autonomy, beetween liberty and the desire for organisation.
The exhibition will be open from 13 April 2025 to 13 May 2025.
Opening: 13 April 2025 at 7 p.m.
Boto Theatre, ul. Bohaterów Monte Cassino 54B, Sopot
Photos from the exhibition are avilable here.