Red Point, 2009

Petr Stacho  

Petr Stacho (born in 1965 in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic) earned his reputation as an excellent glass artist in the early 1990s while still a student at the Academy of Arts in Prague. Yet it is his extraordinary devotion to glass that has made him stand out as a glass artist as he maintains the highest standards of glassmaking craftsmanship and purity of expression.

Stacho carefully chose the best of the many hot-glass techniques in order to create objects of sculptural character decorated in a sophisticated manner while all the lines and shades of the surface are the result of thoughtful designs and elaborate work with liquid glass. His objects may at first sight look as though they have been painted on, but they are actually coiled and covered with lines, scraps and sheets of coloured glass treated with heat. His major works of the late 1990s and the early years of the new millennium are distinguished by a tendency towards monumental forms and the brightening of the substance of the glass itself.

Glass art combines hard physical work with craftsmanship, manufacturing technology with subtle mental processes. These are the aspects that make glass art so attractive and also so hard to master. Stacho apparently chose the triangle as a symbol of intuitive search for perfection and a balance of all these elements of glass art – the ideal perfection of the artist's vision which is being constantly disturbed and interfered with by human imperfection and the random interventions resulting from the unpredictable nature of the glass itself. It is well known that glass always follows its unpredictable essence, and only master artists come close to commanding it.

Basic geometrical forms are invaded by the artist's intent while retaining a striking resemblance to patterns defined originally by Mother Nature – melting ice or freezing liquid, meteorite minerals or transparent substances, all colliding in a dynamic environment of physical natural relations and human imagination.

Petr sculptures are collected and have been exhibited world wide from his home land of The Czech Republic to China, London, Germany and will be shown at SOFA Chicago in USA by Ai Bo Gallery in November.