Exhibitions

Sabbia Gallery is pleased to present this beautiful exhibition by glass master, Klaus Moje.

In 1996 Klaus Moje showed the first of his large wall panels in Venice at the Palazzo Ducale. It was the beginning of one of the most profound shifts in his 50 year career: from vessel to wall. Over the ensuing years Moje has produced a number of series in this format each based on his distinctive language of colour and geometry.  In 2006 Moje began a series of works based on intense linear patterning. These ranged from quiet meditations in some of the earlier pieces to riots of saturated colour in later years. Momentum presents Moje’s most recent wall pieces in this series

While for many years Moje’s work has concentrated on the vessel form he has always used the vessel as a flat plane in the same way a painter uses a canvas.  This reflects Moje’s aesthetic vocabulary which relies on vibrant graphics and a complex colour palette. But at the same time Moje has exploited the ambiguities of the glass surface by making it read as both two and three dimensions.  The shift to working with wall panels has given him a much larger area to work on and the most recent panels take this theme to the next level.

There is a wonderful visual irony in these works. The flat richly patterned graphic surface is also an immensely complex three dimensional field. Solid colours drop away to transparent depths. Submerged colour blocks emerge in glimpses through acute angular shifts. Colour is pushed to an even higher key. Some panels speak quietly while others create a large riotous production stage: riffs of colour jostle across the surface and patterns pulsate in syncopated rhythms. Graphics jump into three dimensions and back again. The whole surface changes with every shift of light. Intense energy is constrained by the discipline of pattern and border.  These pieces are charged with the attraction of opposites. Moje’s own words sum up the effect: the power of the voluptuous combined with the minimal. 

Nola Anderson, 2015