A State of Matter: Modern and Contemporary Glass Sculpture

This artwork, Kosuth’s first conceptual work, exemplifies much of the artist’s thinking. The use of glass of variable sizes rejects the notion of content and form and therefore the consideration of ‘aesthetic choice’. The artwork lacks colour; its shape and size are arbitrary. The choice of the title thus draws attention to the impact a title has on the perception of an artwork. The label Any two meter square sheet of glass to lean against any wall is an answer to both ‘what’ and ‘how’, showing that the material qualities of the work are secondary to the question it poses about the relation between framing, language and perception.

“As my practice as an artist has made clear for some decades, the materials of my work have only value as part of the production of its meaning. I chose glass, firstly, for its diminished esthetic qualities (clearness and lack of a priori value as an art material) and, secondly, it’s availability to be ordered in standardized shapes and sizes, thus reducing the importance given to traditional formal artistic choice. The viewer seeing this exhibition needs to understand that this work is not intended by me as being either ‘sculpture’ or, for that matter, even ‘Modern’. (Thus, the necessity of this posted statement.) When I did this work, in 1965, I was looking for a way to question, in my work, the modernist presumptions of the time. These presumptions consisted of seeing the practice of art as primarily divided between painting and sculpture, and being basically concerned with forms and colors in the service of self-expression. My concerns were, however, located elsewhere: how is meaning produced in and by a work of art. To this end, I needed to diminish the importance of the expected experience of the materials themselves and make visible as much as possible those devices, often linguistic, we routinely naturalize and ignore as part of the viewing process. And, to that end, I agreed to permit my work to be seen within an exhibition context, misframed by the title that it has. My hope is to enable the questions that my work poses, and to make such questions part of this exhibition.”

Joseph Kosuth, 2022

Any two metre square sheet of glass to lean against any wall 1965
Metal plaque and glass

It is hard to reconcile the intricate beauty of Jerram’s sculptures with the horrific diseases that they represent. Rendered in glass at such a magnified scale, the complex detail of the microbes is surprising and delicate, but rather than the fragility of glass, these objects are a reminder of the fragility of human life.

The global impact of diseases such as HIV or malaria is terrifying to contemplate, but Jerram’s sculptures are equally a testament to the huge advances in science and medicine that allow them to be identified and treated.

Ev71 Hand, Foot & Mouth
HIV
Malaria
From Glass Microbiology series, 2004-present
Hand-blown glass

The hot sculpting and cold carving processes used in this sculpture produce the effect of a distinct outline, the rough edges appearing as though the objects have been drawn rather than sculpted.

Walker’s work investigates the relationship between two and three dimensions, between still-life painting and sculpture, exploring art historical references ranging from Northern Renaissance oil painting to Pop Art and Cubism.

The importance of light is a key concern in both painting and glassmaking. Here, Walker demonstrates how reflections and shadows can be manipulated by different techniques to create contrasting surface effects.

SPILLAGE 2019
Glass

Matějka’s magic carpets are an example of how our expectations of glass – that it is fragile or transparent, for example – can be easily confounded. Matějka produced a series of magic carpets; at a record-breaking three hundred kilograms, the largest carpet is the heaviest piece of kiln-formed cast glass ever made.

The delicate patterns are derived from historic sites, including gothic castles, cemeteries and cathedrals across Scotland and the north of England, which are encoded onto the sculptures like an ancient language. The magic carpets travel across space and time, connecting ancient and modern forms of art.

Magic Carpets 2004
Cast glass

Levenson was born in Argentina and is now based in Italy. Her glass sculptures invariably contain a pointed social commentary. In this instance, the cast glass child’s dress is symbolic of the fragility of childhood and the impossibility of protecting children from the world around them.

The sculpture relates to a larger project, where multiple glass casts of children’s clothing refer to the enforced adoption of Argentinian children whose parents were killed during the military dictatorship. The idea that childhood – like a glass dress – can be so easily shattered is a powerful one.

Untitled 2007
Cast glass child’s dress

Now in his nineties, Eisch is one of the most prominent glassmakers of the twentieth-century; a hugely important figure who introduced pioneering studio glassmaking techniques to the US and transformed late-twentieth century glassmaking.

Trained in fine art, Eisch brought sculptural concerns to the fore in his glassmaking, creating glass works that were cast directly from his idiosyncratic, expressionistic sculptures. With their painterly surfaces and imperfect forms, Eisch’s sculptures reflect his artistic philosophy of a humanistic, intuitive approach to art.

Tele Komm Komm 027-418 1998
Free-blown hot glass

Despite describing himself exclusively as a sculptor, McLean works across many different media, from prints to performance and painting to pottery. This sculpture is cast from an artwork he originally made in 1958. Seeking to emulate the work of modernist sculptors, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore, McLean made the stone carving as a fourteen year old boy, and kept it in his garden in the intervening decades.

Some fifty-five years later, in a characteristically experimental move, a mould was made from this early work and McLean cast the head in glass, reconfiguring the sculpture not just materially but also temporally.

Head 2013
Mould blown glass

Mummy’s Little Soldier reflects upon race and identity, informed by the representations of so-called ‘blackamoors’ that Locke encountered around Venice while making the sculpture. Blackamoor was a term used historically to describe black people of African descent, and the figure of the enslaved blackamoor appeared repeatedly throughout the decorative arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Locke’s sculpture is also a reference to the child soldiers caught up and exploited in conflicts around the world, who are often told that the amulets and potions they are given will make them invincible. Soldiers are a recurring theme in Locke’s work, as he dismantles and reconfigures the visual symbols of the imperial past and present. The fragility of glass reflects the fragility of real-life child soldiers, an association that renders the decorative properties of Murano glass as subversively grotesque.

Mummy’s Little Soldier 2013
Hand-blown Murano glass with metal chains and bottles. Fabricated at Berengo Glass Studios, Venice in collaboration with Venice Projects, London College of Fashion and the Wallace Collection.

The role of air in the production of blown glass is the subject of Maria Bang Espersen’s film Breathing. In most cases, molten glass is shaped by the act of a person using a blowing iron, which directs breath from their lungs into the glass to inflate it. In this case, Espersen pumped compressed air into the glass, using the immense force to create gigantic balloons of glass that slowly and agonisingly expand to precariously enormous sizes. Eventually of course, if you keep blowing, all balloons burst – these were no exception.

Breathing 2015
Film, 7 minutes

The decorative properties of blown glass are subverted to great effect by the De La Torre Brothers, whose baroque figure El Monarca is part of their ongoing exploration of their bicultural identities and the complexities of the immigrant experience for Mexican Americans.

The De La Torre Brothers have made glass a central material in their work, which draws on a variety of cultural sources including: religious iconography, Mexican vernacular crafts, pre-Columbian art and contemporary pop culture. The layering of cultural references, materials and decorative elements creates an aesthetic of excess, but one which is delivered with irreverent humour and wit.

El Monarca 2014
Hot sculpted and waterjet cut glass with plastics

Pope’s sculpture is based on a drawing, which then became this three-dimensional object made of blown glass, which has recently been reincarnated as a handwoven Turkish carpet. The gravity-defying form exists in a state of endless becoming, in which it is constantly on the verge of turning into something else.

Working across disparate materials, and frequently referring back to drawings and notes from the past, Pope’s exuberant, colourful sculpture is part of his wider mission to convey complex personal and emotional histories through abstract form and experimental processes.

Now Lost in Space 2015
Blown and sculpted glass

Woffenden’s work is often based on the figure, but not as we know it. Unsettling forms doing mysterious things challenge our perception of the figurative and the relationship between the human body and psyche.

Although this sculpture contains many recognisable elements, its overall appearance is rendered unfamiliar and strange. The construction of the head – with its protruding tongue – is reminiscent of aliens from science fiction films, but the inclusion of obvious genitalia adds a primal and somewhat predatory element to the sculpture that is all too human.

Creature 2015-18
Blown glass and plaster

Like many of Hatoum’s sculptures and installations, this work refers implicitly to the body and is loaded with uncomfortable associations. The blown glass shapes have a visceral appearance, the amorphous red glass evoking blood cells or organs. Despite their unsettling or even abject connotations, these become deeply aesthetically pleasing when rendered in blown glass.

The ‘cells’ of the title can be interpreted in many different ways: as well as the red glass blood cells, the locked steel cages containing them suggest prison cells. Although the steel structure refers to the clean lines and grid-like structures of minimalism, Hatoum disrupts this by explicitly associating it with the idea of confinement or punishment.

Cells 2014
Zinc plated steel and glass

Stanicky’s sculpture combines the prosaic, familiar form of a car window with the fantastical form of stretched, molten mirror glass. The liquid mirror droplet is ‘attacking’ the pane of glass, biting through it as the two forms collide.

The sculpture is one part of a triptych, which explores the ways in which we see the world through glass: looking through car windows and seeing the world reflected in mirrors are part of our everyday visual experience. Stanicky transforms the everyday act of looking into a surreal encounter, as we watch ourselves eating our own reflection.

Mirror-Mondeo Bite 2014
Car window with blown and mirrored glass

Falkenstein was a hugely innovative artist who experimented with a range of materials. Best known for her mid-century work in welded metal, Falkenstein developed a new way of working with glass and metal which fused the two together without melting the metal structures around which she based her work. The technique was most famously seen in Falkenstein’s New Gates of Heaven which she created in 1961 for Peggy Guggenheim’s home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

Falkenstein preferred the term ‘structures’ to describe her sculptures, a reference to her interest in the topological relationship between matter and space, which in this case is complicated by the addition of the melted glass to the nest-like form of the metal.

Untitled c. 1965
Untitled c. 1968
Untitled c. 1968
Copper and glass

Engelfriet’s film is the product of an extraordinary experiment. After creating a large bed of cold, damp clay, Engelfriet poured liquid glass heated to 600 degrees centigrade onto the raw clay.

The result is mesmerising; the molten glass creates glowing rivers through the clay, forming fragile bubbles that explode as they cool. The final ‘traces’ of the glass are brittle shards embedded into the dried clay, with the film presenting the only remaining evidence that the experiment ever took place.

Glassporen (Glass Traces) 2015
Film, 12 minutes 21 seconds