Pavlína Šváchová: Beyond Format
Czech Design Week
Clam-Gallas Palace in Prague
11. - 14. 9. 2025
Curator: Lenka Sýkorová
Photo: Anna Pleslová
The exhibition Beyond Format presents the current work of glass artist Pavlína Šváchová, emphasizing the dialogue between drawing, glass, matter, space, and movement. It is based on experimental research into the possibilities of lampwork glass, its malleability, and its expressive potential, which transcends the plane of two-dimensional drawing into a glass object.
A key element of the exhibition is the glass rod — a simplified, pure bearer of line, the distilled essence of drawing. It leaves the medium of drawing and enters space as a material drawing that becomes an object. Its mass carries fragility, tension, and resistance, while remaining in constant dialogue with the body, movement, color, and light. Drawing here is not just the result of a gestural record, but a form of thinking in matter, connecting craftsmanship, design aesthetics, and the principles of contemporary intermedia art.
The curatorial approach emphasizes the themes of lines, bodies, and their movement in space. Drawing is conceived as a process — sometimes pointillist, sometimes linear, often scattered or concentrated in a single object. The architecture of the exhibition plays a key role, based on the specifics of the given space and determining the rhythm of the installation, the orientation of the objects, and the play of light and shadow.
A glass rod — an object placed on a panel, on slumped glass, or on cement blocks — accentuates the surface, point, and line — drawing in its elementary form. Slumped glass then shows the possibilities of the material's malleability in the tension between the technical challenge and the poetics of the resulting form. Each point of contact between the glass and another surface raises the question of relationship: what happens when a drawing becomes spatial, glass matter becomes lines, and shadow becomes image?
Shadow is also an important element of the installation, extending the physical dimension of the object by another plane of perception – optical, psychological, and temporal. The projected image of a glass line becomes an ephemeral drawing that exists only in a given moment of light.
Beyond Format is not only the title of the exhibition, but also a call to transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplines – to explore drawing as a living, space-time process and an intermedia language of contemporary art, realized through the medium of glass.