Rony Plesl ranks among the world’s top artists in the field of glass sculpture. His unique oeuvre emerges from his deep knowledge of quality glassmaking and from his profound love for the ambiguous matter of glass. Fascinated by its constant metamorphosis, he seeks the natural form of glass in his art while employing groundbreaking technologies in his designs. Rather than challenging current trends, he follows impulses from various disciplines. He explores the possibilities of glass sculpture, deliberately approaching it as a distinctive medium.
The Trees Grow from the Sky exhibition is divided into two parts. The first one presents an eponymous installation featured at the prestigious contemporary art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia – Biennale Arte 2022, bringing it from Venice to the Czech public. Premiered at the Renaissance church of Santa Maria della Visitazione, the exhibition project, in the form of three vertical crystal trees and a horizontal trunk in shiny emerald uranium glass, addressed the questions of human existence, navigating us as we seek our path in the world of today. Over the seven months of Biennale Arte, Plesl’s work was seen by almost a hundred and fifty thousand visitors.
The second part of the exhibition reveals the most current positions of Plesl’s work in the medium of glass. The visually striking composition of objects of rather intimate character in the morphology of wild roses, sharp thorns and crafting tools is transformed into sensual, subversive, almost unsettling images. Plesl creates mysterious and dreamy landscapes capturing the artist’s perception of classic categories of art history. The form of the installation, however, does not allow a romantic diction, rather giving strict expression to the current notion of the medium. For the first time ever, Plesl also presents drawings which he sees as a legitimate part of his work. They reveal a monumental sculptural gesture while carrying the light qualities and the memory of paper.