Description

Untitled by Chris Taylor comprises nine separate, mold-blown glass sculptures of everyday objects, ranging from a Styrofoam cup and a cheap drinking beaker to wads of bubble wrap and a clamshell take-out carton. These elements have no prescribed arrangement and may be exhibited in full or in part. The color of the glass used varies, from opaque white for the Styrofoam casts to the volumetric, translucent glass used for the bubble wrap. The mold-blown sculptures are life-size and retain the surface textures of the original objects, creating an illusory, or trompe l’oeil, effect. It is almost impossible to tell that these objects are glass simulations. Yet Taylor intentionally leaves evidence of his process—for example, a bubble of glass on the clamshell—firmly subverting concepts of preciosity. Furthering this idea, the seeming familiarity of the objects urges the viewer not just to look but also to touch.


Context and Analysis

Like the rest of Taylor’s work, Untitled investigates the friction between traditions of glassmaking and the possibilities for the continued existence of this craft and its products in the contemporary world. The objects that make up Untitled are sculptural, delicately rendered, mold-blown glass forms. Yet the work actively resists the intricacy of its making through the deliberate reference to obsolescence and the everyday. These objects are replicas of things made for the sole purpose of carrying other, more precious materials and quickly being discarded. Taylor’s work is thus a playful and irreverent comment on the prizing of certain materials over others. As such, it provokes harder questions about authenticity and the value of certain materials and makers over others.


In 1917, the French American artist Marcel Duchamp created his famous Dada Fountain, in which a ready-made object, a commercial plumbing fixture, was displayed as a work of art—suggesting that artistic concept could trump craftsmanship or skill. Taylor’s glass objects similarly imitate familiar, disposable objects. Yet Untitled also overturns notions long associated with the Western avant-garde of the 1900s. The work relies on the power of illusion and on artistic skills such as mold-blown glass, a craft tradition that has roots in ancient Rome.


Taylor has constantly experimented, not only with the limits of the glassblowing craft itself, but also with the arena in which he performs as an artist and the process, rather than the product, of his labors. He has blown glass while suspended upside down, testing the boundaries of the physical labor involved in its production. In Small Craft Advisory (2009) the artist created a fully functional, hot lava furnace inside a seven-foot-long boat. Sitting in dangerous proximity to the furnace, he blew glass while out on the Atlantic, letting the results slide into the water and disintegrate. Creating work in these conditions explores glassmaking in action, performatively and intuitively, rather than through mastery of technique. The artist extends this practice into the display of works like Untitled: He prefers that they be shown in the open, without a glass vitrine. The danger of the boat-studio lingers in the possibility that the viewer may mistake his work for its original signifier rather than see it as a fragile object on display.


Connections

Taylor’s work operates in the space between fine art and craft. His work connects to the history of modern-day experiments with materiality, concept, and the breaking of traditional boundaries between artistic mediums, examples of which can be seen in the contemporary collection of the Currier, such as Kathy Butterly (Currier, 2013.29 , 2013.30), Peter Voulkos (Currier, 2009.1, 2009.8), and Betty Woodman (Currier, 2003.40). It is also in dialogue with the Currier’s collection of historic glass, from the utilitarian beakers and kitchenware of the 1700s to delicate, decorative design objects made by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the 1900s (Currier, 1974.33.293).


Written by Michelle Millar Fisher



Bibliography

Adamson, Glenn. “The Downside of Success.” American Craft Magazine, February–March 2012. http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/downside-success

“An Attempt to Map Out the Increasingly Complex World of Glass Art.” GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, February 26, 2012. http://blog.glassquarterly.com/2012/02/26/can-glass-art-be-analyzed-with-complete-objectivity/

Chris Taylor. Exh. cat. Hartford, CT: Real Art Ways, 2009.

“Chris Taylor.” DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. 2010. http://www.decordova.org/chris-taylor (accessed August 1, 2013).

“Chris Taylor Glass Blowing in Dinghy.” Video clip from presentation at Craft Forward, San Francisco, April 3, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhz9rYnmCNk

“Film of Chris Taylor Experimenting with Upside Down Glassblowing during the Pilchuck Session 5, 2005.” http://archive.org/details/Chris_Taylor_Upside_Down_Glass_Blowing (accessed August 1, 2013).

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“RISD Faculty Bio: Chris Taylor.” RISD.edu (accessed August 1, 2013).