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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

DALE CHIHULY Art Glass

reporter/photographer: Miguel Dominguez
text: Marlborough Gallery


Marlborough Gallery had an exhibition of new work by Dale Chihuly on March 12th.


A 50-year journey exploring color and light crescendos with Chihuly at Marlborough, which displayed a new series of work titled Rotolo. In these works, glass is handled in an aggressively physical manner resulting in the most technically challenging pieces that the artist has produced. Chihuly remarks, “Working on my new series, Rotolo, rekindled my excitement for working with clear glass. I was really amazed by the complexity and brilliance of the form, which started from a simple coil.”




With a background in architecture, Chihuly has always been interested in space and light. Working within the architecture of the gallery, Chihuly will present smaller sculptural works from his established series along with large-scale installations. At the center of the gallery will be Sapphire Neon with Burned Logs and Neodymium Reeds. This piece is the result of work produced with and in nature since the 1970s; a period marked by his initial experimentation with neon as a medium. Chihuly states, “I use glass, plastic and neon…a lot of different materials. I am fascinated with putting these materials together – transparent materials – materials that have to do with light… The magic is in the light.” The Reeds came out of a multi-week project during the longest days of the year in Nuutajärvi, Finland, in 1995.


Born in 1941 in Tacoma, Washington, Chihuly was introduced to glass while studying at the University of Washington. After graduating in 1965, Chihuly enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University of Wisconsin. In 1968, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, Chihuly went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice where he observed the team approach to blowing glass that is central to his style of working today. He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he later established the glass program and taught for more than a decade.


Dale Chihuly’s work is included in over 200 museum collections worldwide. His work has been exhibited in major venues such as the de Young Museum in San Francisco, in 2008; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2011; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art in 2013. Additional institutions include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.













 



































Highlights of Chihuly’s extensive exhibition history include the ambitious show, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000, for which he created extraordinary installations within the ancient stone walls of the Tower of David Museum. In September of that same year, he traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, to unveil an eighteen-foot chandelier gracing the main entrance of the museum. In 2001, the Victoria & Albert Museum devoted an important solo exhibition to Chihuly’s work. Since then he has exhibited in numerous public institutions, including a series of sublime exhibitions at botanical gardens, including the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London in 2005, the New York Botanical Garden in 2006, the Denver Botanic Garden in 2014, and currently, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida.

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