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“Translucent, fragile, fluid yet hard, free blown Glass and its magical depths became my creative friends and explorers over a decade ago. Over this time span, transparency, translucency, bottomless variety of form and unyielding nature of Glass gained my affection permanently. Maybe that’s why I allow Glass to retain its 'creative license' to complete my ideas – anywhere between its extremely hot and super-cooled liquid stages. I am fascinated by Glass’ ability to take in and contain light. resulting in reversed plasticity.
I do respect Glass in its naturally polished state, however, only occasionally do I find use for it in my creative processes. Sandblasting allows me to better define objects, endowing them with more palpable volume and 'readability.' If there is polished surface, I use it sparingly, mostly to highlight form-defining curves or to put emphasis on space. In the deliberate absence of color, it’s the purity of form buttressed by the power of negative space that takes the center stage.”
Alex Fekete creates tall, sleek, graceful artifacts in clear colorless glass. Quintessential to his work, the glassblowing phase is where the fledgling form takes shape. After the form cools, it is shaped and sculpted in the cold shop using grinding tools. He removes a great deal of the original form, creating objects with as much negative space as translucent form. The abstract shapes are then sandblasted to attain visual mass via its frosty surface. This is an elaborate process, which can take over 100 hours to complete.
In his sculpture, striated areas evoke the geological aspects of landscape and the use of small stones act as an organic counterpoint to the spare, contemporary lines of the sculpture. The resulting body of work is extremely dramatic and beautifully composed. Fekete's objects are abstract, visually balanced, delineated by the minimal representation of form and volumes. The use of negative space and precarious placement of pebbles imply visual tension. Freezing, thawing, relentless heat; Rock formations and canyons sculpted by forces of nature, each tiny strata representing eons, often become reflections of our own memories.
Alex Fekete first arrived to the U.S. on the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 1992 and earned his MFA two years later. He went on to teach at the university level for over a decade. His affair with sculpted glass started around the same time. Alex was born and raised in former Czechoslovakia.
ALEX FEKETE
