Patrik Illo & Aleksandra Stencel: Designed in Slovakia

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Where?

• Skanzen Huta Slavia

  • Şinteu, 417550, Bihor, Rumunsko

When?

• Opening: 16. 8. 2024, 6:00 p.m.

• Exhibition duration: 16. 8. 2024 - 16. 9. 2024

 

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Curator:

• PhDr. Petr Nový; PhD.

Patrik Illo & Aleksandra Stencel: Designed in Slovakia

Central Europe has for years been one of the world’s leading centres of handmade glass-making, just like Venice in Italy. There, however, the craftsmanship and design focus mainly on glass decorated in the heat of the glass furnace, while the tradition of the countries beyond the Alps (including Slovakia) is more technologically diverse. Besides engraving or painting, cutting is the most common technique. Patrik Illo and Aleksandra Stencel are able to reliably choose the most suitable combination from the diverse palette of the world’s glass heritage. They also excel in details of shape and decoration.

Patrik Illo and Aleksandra Stencel are among Slovakia’s top designers. Their work is well known in other European countries. Patrik Illo is also a freelance artist – conceptually working not only with glass, a respected university glass teacher, organiser, and curator of exhibitions and symposia. Illo and Stencel work together – within the ILLOLA design studio – and also independently, designing externally for well-known Slovak, Czech, and Polish glass brands. They complement, inspire, and motivate each other. They are partners and competitors at the same time, kindred spirits in their personal and professional lives.

Despite the constant pressure for automation in the production of utilitarian and decorative glass, Central Europe is still an oasis of handmade glass. However, if this craft is to develop and survive into the future, it must offer products that cannot be created in other ways. It would be a mistake to focus only on luxury and limited collections for a select few. Design emerged as a distinctly democratic discipline with the task of bringing the artistic quality of utilitarian objects to the general public at a higher but still acceptable price, even in times of overproduction. Patrik Illo and Aleksandra Stencel know this very well. Their design is not shallow or flashy, but well thought out, often spare; modest, yet effective. They are also no strangers to the aesthetics of contrast, as they like to successfully combine modernist and post-modern creative principles in one object.  That is why their design work is a joy not only to exhibit but also to use.

 

PhDr. Petr Nový, Ph.D.

Muzeum skla a bižuterie v Jablonci nad Nisou

 

 

 

• Organized in cooperation with the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Bucharest
• Supported by public funds through Sloak arts council

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