Elements - tranquillising work by Bert Frijns

The artworks of Bert Frijns (1953) are a confluence of glass, lines and light. Over the past five decades, he has mainly made bowls and dishes in various sizes, without colour and without ornaments. His installations radiate calmness and clarity. With his works, Frijns enters into a relationship with the environment: the heat of his oven, the earth from his garden, the water with which he fills his bowls, and the wind that creates waves in the surface of the water. The four elements of fire, earth, water and air bring us closer to the meaning of his tranquil works.

Frijns calls himself a glass designer. After training as a sculptor at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, he continued there at the glass working group under Sybren Valkema, who encouraged him to experiment.

Glass will be its material. It is pioneering work: in the 1970s, glass was not a common material in autonomous visual art. He makes the technique his own by trying and experimenting.

The bowls often have a similar shape, but are not repetitive. Nor are they easy to make. Frijns works with sheets of ordinary window glass, in a technique called slumping. In an oven, he heats a sheet of glass, which consequently melts and expands into a shape. But: his precise working method is the master's secret, the exact method he keeps to himself.