National Glass Centre

The exhibition celebrates the collaboration between Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova, two of the worlds most respected sculptures. Their career spanned the second half of the twentieth century, a time of political and social change in the Czech Republic.

'If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. This is why Neitzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfilment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversley, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?'

This paragraph is taken from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, first published by Harper & Row 1984. Translated from Nesmesitna lehkost byti, copyright Milan Kundera (SMALLER)

The exhibition is curated and produced by National Glass Centre with guest curator Caterina Tognon. Acknowledgement, Architect Miroslav Masak