Continuing through June 29, 2013
Because of its permeability to light, glass as an artistic medium enjoys a unique relationship to color. This relationship is the conceit of the three-pronged, 15-person exhibition "Chroma-Culture." In the front gallery is an exploration of chromatic excess, exemplified by a suite of untitled works by German-born Klaus Moje. Moje counterposes dense slivers of color against darker constrasting backgrounds in ways that suggest, at once, the rigor of the Bauhaus School that was Moje’s pedagogical inspiration and the Aboriginal patterns of his adopted homeland, Australia. Works by American artist Richard Marquis complement this part of the exhibition, especially the artist’s "Razzle Dazzle" series, based on the World War I-era camouflage patterns.
In the first-floor back gallery are works that riff on chromatic and symbolic associations with black. Ted Sawyer’s eruptive "welt" and Clifford Rainey’s Grim Reaper-like "Mourner" stand out. Upstairs in a cavernous gallery bereft of natural light, dramatically lit with halogens, is an exploration of white. The room is highlighted by Jessica Loughlin’s "subsurface," which underlies a slab of milky opacity with a yellow-orangish wedge, and Tanja Pak’s virtuosic "Whiteness Clouds," with its skyscape filigree floating above a meticulously designed table set with one-of-a-kind flatware and stemware. The exhibition as a whole takes what could have been a didactic premise — the continuum from saturation to grayscale — and turns it into the stuff of visual/symbolic rapture.
