Born in Tel Aviv, and living and working between Berlin, Germany and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Jehoshua Rozenman is a sculptor who also painted and worked with video, until he discovered glass as a medium for making his ideas tangible. Since then he almost solely focuses on working with glass. Although glass is his material, his sculptures look as if they are made of wax, iron or ceramics. His work is sometimes called anti-glass. The transitory nature of life is the ever-present theme in his work, its organic nature alludes to nature. As he sees it, all art is about deceiving life, about creating something that is supposed to be there forever although that is not what the artist wants. “I have always been mainly interested in temporary projects, in events that only go on for a little while, and all that remains is the memory. Transience is evident in all my work, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. I have no objection to cracks in my work, that is part and parcel of the process. I developed my own technique with glass as material and that’s why it looks completely different from what one expects of glass.”
“Glass is a material with any number of dualities. It has more chance of surviving than a painting, but it can also shatter into pieces. It can break and is fragile, but it can also last thousands of years. It can be a thing of beauty, but it can also show the dark side of life. It is strong, but in my work it is also enormously vulnerable with sharp corners and protrusions. The issue of whether a work of art will defy time or shatter to pieces is something that interests me. To me, glass is not the message, but the bridge to convey the message. Maybe it is the confusion that appeals to me. It is exciting to use a material people associate with functionality or trinkets. In a sense, my work is aesthetic but not beautiful. I do not make decorative objects and I do not emphasize the cheerful side of life. What I am looking for are images that can have meaning. That can be a metaphor for something else. I am balancing on a borderline.” Jehoshua Rozenman uses the versatility and implicit characteristics of glass as a material to create works of art with multiple meanings. With layers that can touch personal as well as universal feelings and bring you closer to the transitory nature of life.