Milan Krajíček: Fluidum

Milan Krajíček (born 1977) is among those students of Professor Vladimír Kopecký (born 1931) at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), who have taken the credo of their former teacher to heart – namely, that: “If you don’t have anything to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Krajíček developed his artistic voice at a slow pace, and without the need for any great bombast. After years of searching, the artist, working up to then as a designer and teacher at the Akademie Světlá nad Sázavou school of arts, brought forth a notable and original artistic conception. Vessels and objets d’art, produced via an innovative custom-developed technology of cast glass sculpting, which expands on the morphology of cut glass from the Czech Vysočina region through so-called trihedron shapes, successfully merging experimentation in the fields of craftsmanship and artistry.

In his conception, glass is a kind of fluid, an alchemistic substance, from which works can be created that border on both a liquid and solid state. Krajíček is unafraid of deconstructing shapes, or of playing with material concepts and their surroundings, or of merging internal and external spaces. And yet he is also an experienced designer, who successfully resisted the temptation to subject and subjugate his art to current design trends. Rather, Krajíček partakes in true creativity, stepping out on the precariously thin ice of distinctiveness – surely, the true task of every person engaged in artistry.

Galerie Kuzebauch was founded in Prague in 2012. The gallery showcases exceptional studio works produced by both young and established designers and artists. The gallery assists such people to gain recognition across artistic disciplines at home and also abroad. Contemporary art glass is a particular focus of the gallery. Hundreds of small glass workshops across the Czech Republic enable those creators to experiment with many glass disciplines and techniques with hands-on. This is specific to Bohemian glass, not only the long history, local white sands, skilled craftsmen, but also the knowledge combined with passion, which has been kept and developed locally for centuries.