InVisible Glass Design at Museo Franz Mayer offers a look at seventy years of glass design by Nouvel, Pavisa and Vissio. Over 700 objects comprise a precise look at the material, technical and formal possibilities of glass. Curated by Emiliano Godoy.
InVisible. Glass Design
October 9, 2019 – January 12, 2020
InVisible Glass Design at Museo Franz Mayer traces the production of glass objects in Mexico over the last few decades, from everyday packaging to architectural−scale art pieces. Glass is an enigmatic material. Solid, sharp and transparent. Resistant and precise, yet so delicate and fragile that it inspires fear and respect, glass can materialize the most varied universe of forms and uses. This exhibition brings together several hundred surprisingly diverse objects from the Nouvel, Grupo Pavisa and Vissio collections.
In addition, it presents a large and eclectic group of creative minds who aim at pushing the limits of glassmaking. Designers, artists and architects play with the plasticity, optical complexity and depth of glass to modify its expressions and to create new aesthetic languages. However, unlike other materials, glass production is never an individual effort. The formal idea only exists in symbiosis with the craftsman’s workmanship, and is produced within an industrial context and through significant financial leverage. Artistic intentions must be negotiated with a mass that flows at more than 1,300 degrees Celsius, and it is only through a profound complicity with technique and engineering that a form can be frozen at the exact moment.
These galleries present only a chapter of the history of glass in Mexico. The Museo Franz Mayer’s permanent collection houses pieces that allow visitors to travel through several centuries of objects, both ordinary and exceptional—some manufactured with traditional techniques that are still in use today. In conversation with the exhibition, one can find in the permanent collection a display that reflects this centennial dialogue between historical pieces and contemporary products.
InVisible. Glass Design thus takes us into a world of glass and invites us to rethink the value and expressiveness of the objects around us, as well as to see the symbiotic relationship that, with a touch of systematic creativity and rigorous experimentation, design can achieve together with local manufacturing. – Emiliano Godoy, Curator