Glass hammers by Pia Hinz

Pia Hinz builds hammers that could shatter at a touch.

The German-born sculptor Pia Hinz (b. 1991) works in stained glass, not windows, but objects. Screws, traffic cones, scythes, and shopping carts. Tools and labour symbols rendered in coloured glass segments joined by visible metal lines, their industrial purpose intact but their material logic inverted.

The tension is deliberate. These are objects built for pressure, for grip, for repetition, now frozen in a medium that threatens to break under the slightest force. A hammer that cannot strike. A rope that cannot pull.

Light does the rest. It passes through the coloured surfaces and casts tinted reflections onto nearby walls and floors, extending each object beyond its physical boundaries. The sculptures occupy more space than they should, fragility expanding where force once concentrated.

Hinz works between Amsterdam, Arles, and Ardèche, moving traditional stained glass technique out of the ecclesiastical context and into the territory of the everyday. The sacred window becomes a tractor door.