Romantic with a heart of glass
Duality and complexity of material allows artist to cast its different qualities, Wang Qian reports.
For Xie Wendi, glass is a fascinating material with a contradictory nature. It can be fragile or resilient, transparent or opaque, rigid yet malleable. It may look light, but is actually quite heavy.
"The more I work with glass, the more I feel like it: fluid and solid. When heated, it flows and takes different shapes, and when it cools, it is strong in compression, as am I," the 35-year-old artist says.
These paradoxical properties are on full display in her latest installation, Nothing New Under the Sun, which is on show in two display cases that resemble "windows" at the Gravity Art Museum in Beijing. The collection of 20 objects inspired by everyday items have been positioned in a "mischievous" way, and cannot all be seen at a glance.
The objects are designed to fill the windows, some interlocked with others in spirals, breaking the boundaries between heavy and light, soft and hard. As sunlight passes through the windows, captivating illusions are created. "You have to move about to change your angle to discover all the pieces," Xie says.
