ROTATIONS | Tobias Møhl

ROTATIONS, Heller Gallery’s series of summer exhibitions, ends with a spotlight on the work of Danish artist Tobias Møhl.  On view from September 8-22, 2023, the exhibition, Møhl’s first New York solo show in over a decade,  will include examples of his Black Twill and Silk Spinner installations as well as individual examples of these as well as his Glass Weaver series. 

“I let the glassblowing itself inspire me and curiosity motivates me,” says Møhl. “I look for textile and optical qualities in the glass and try to cultivate these. I’m not groping my way forward but working steadily onward. I’m working hard, and there’s lots of rejects as I pursue and refine the paths that evolve through my professional skills.”

Tobias Møhl is recognized within the international glass community as one of the outstanding talents of the 21st Century. He started working with glass at the age of 17, at 19 he entered the training program at the Homegaard Glassworks, a Danish glassmaking company founded in 1825.  He honed his skills as a production worker, and became a certified Master, but it was his encounter with legendary Italian glassblower and eventually teacher, Lino Tagliapietra that captured his interest and fueled his passion and fascination with traditional Italian glassblowing techniques. The different patterns in his work are created using filigrano, cane and pasterelly, Venetian techniques which Møhl has explored over thirty-five years of research and experimentation.

A modernist, Tobias Møhl creates elegant vessels, understated in both form and color - complex but never flamboyant. As the New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote in a review ‘the work of Tobias Møhl, a Danish glassmaker, impresses sotto voce with small bowls crisscrossed with infinitesimal threads of color.’ Combining an extraordinary technical mastery of his craft with an exquisite level of taste, he successfully translates a historically Italian glass-making idiom into his own, distinctly Scandinavian voice. Tobias Møhl’s glasswork is included in more than a dozen public collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Memorial Art Museum, Rochester, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; The Danish Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, among others. A studio artist and teacher, he works and resides in Ebeltoft, Denmark.