PIPALUK LAKE

HERE AND BEYOND

The Danish glass artist Pipaluk Lake occupies a unique position on the international glass scene. Her intense experimentation with the expressive qualities of glass has very few parallells in the world of glass. She approaches glass quite simply as if it were a completely new material whose possibilities need to be researched exhaustively. Over a number of years she has developed a technique that involves heating sheets of glass suspended or stacked over a metal structure in a kiln so that the softened glass begins to flow and the sheets fuse together. The process in the kiln is only partially controllable, so the finished piece embodies a large degree of chance, with clear traces of the way it was created. The combination of colours that have been applied to the individual pieces of glass, and the deformation that took place during the fusion process accentuates the shape of the objects and the movement of the glass. The result is shapes that appear indeterminate, created by the laws of nature. Carefully planned chance, one might say; chance occurences that are only possible because of a tireless search for precisely the magic moment when the forces of nature coincide with the artist’s intentions.

For the current exhibition, Pipaluk Lake has developed her technique to become a clear dialogue between metal wire and sheets of glass. Whereas the metal structures in her earlier pieces exclusively served an engineering role, they have now acquired an independent meaning. The metal wires are now on an equal footing with the glass in the final form of the pieces; they both give the glass direction and complete each shape as an independent aesthetic element. The wires are, for instance, transformed into handles or almost graphic, skeleton-like structures which complement the expressive features of the glass. This results in pieces that more than ever integrate the underlying wire framework into the finished work – process and sculptural quality. “Here and Beyond” is exactly the right title for the exhibition, since the pieces are not only recognisable on an almost instinctive, sensual level, but they also appear totally unusual and downright alien. Thus, the pieces elude intellectual understanding; it’s philosophically interesting that they belong among completely open meanings because the path to understanding is via the body. It’s the body that sensates, not the intellect, which in this case lags well behind. Only seeds of recognition – vague feelings of solidarity with the creative forces of nature – are sown. The rest is sensation; pure sensation.

This rich fund of language-less sensation gives access to a realisation we quite simply do not find anywhere else than in art. It is here we can sensate and experience a world that can neither be thought of nor experienced intellectually, because recognition is embedded directly in the body. It requires our presence and intense engagement; a sensating body; a meeting between artwork and beholder. Pipaluk Lake is a formidable purveyor of this experience, precisely because she is intensely engaged in the magic moment when formless material solidifies and reveals a world of far more meaning than that we can derive using the power of thought.

Louise Mazanti
Ph.d, professor

Translated from Danish by Alan Lake