With a great stroke of luck, I happened to have a dental appointment today at Paragon, and discovered this amazing Liuli (ancient chinese glass) art exhibition at Paragon Atrium!! The exhibition is a joint one between 2 leading Liuli artists, American Steven Weinberg and Taiwanese Loretta Hui-shan Yang. Their glass art is absolutely breathtaking, 100%. I’ve posted only a few of their wonderful works here, which are really only the tip of the iceberg. 

*I didnt dare to take photos there.. so here are scans of the ‘brochures’ i took.

Firstly, 2 works by Weinberg:

In this ‘Mystic Cube’, Weinberg made great use of positive and negative shapes to create this simple yet elegant piece of work. He leaves out negative spaces in this cube to also achieve a certain effect, and this leaves space for the viewer’s imagination. I feel that the empty spaces are really powerful. In a sense they add contrast to this work, as they are comparatively irregular in shape than the rigid vertices of the upper part of the cube (the solid part). The cube also evokes a sense of surreal peace in me, perhaps due to the half-translucent rolling curves and the laddered pillars, which seems to represent some lost civilisation in some Shangri-la. The half-translucent rolling curves in the cube reminds me of mountains and hills, and the seemingly impossible laddered pillars that ’support’ these mountains adds to the surreality of this piece. I love the way the gradual variations in opacity within the cube softens the ‘hardness’ of the laddered pillars, adding a touch of ‘flowingness’ to this otherwise rigid and angular Cube.

  

This is a piece that I marvel at – the ‘Golden Boat’, which is my favourite in his ‘The Boats and Buoys’ series. Although the entire glass work is in the representational shape of a boat, I think the interior of the ‘boat’ actually represents the ocean, with the base like the seabed. The pretty little bubbles look like buoys, and I’m really amazed at the painstaking accuracy of the position and size of the bubbles. Notice how each bubble is like pinched from the ’seabed’, with a fine strand of glass connecting them together, making the bubbles look as if they’re in the process of floating up to the surface.  The bubbles also enhance the reflections off the glass, making the bubbles look really exquisite and beautiful. In the simplicity of this work lies great thought, like how the glass is cast at the precise angles where the refractions of the interior of the ‘boat’ are captured to the best effect.

 

  

And here’re 2 works by Yang:

‘Spring Peony Offering’ is a huge but delicately-made glass flower. You can see that Yang’s works are much more complex and detailed than Weinberg, who is known for his simplicity but elegance in his works. However, the amount of detail and the realistic nature in this work is amazing. The translucency of the glass and the reflections off it really make the flower look so delicate and fresh. Also, the petals are oriented in a very natural manner, replicating nature so well with such a difficult medium to work with. Notice that even each anther of the flower seems like a dancer or an acrobat, being caught in mid-action. All these details make the flower look so graceful and elegant. There even seems to be a touch of heavenly-dream-like essence to this work.

 

 

 
This is another awesomely realistic piece of work by Yang, befittingly named ‘Enlightened’. Yang’s works largely centre around her spiritual beliefs – Buddhism. This piece of work evokes a feeling of spiritual peace in me. Maybe because due to the glass structure, the palm and the lotus within the glass block look as if they’re emitting light, like they’re glowing with that kind of ethereal, heavenly light. XD
The tiny bubbles in the glass make this work feel as if it is underwater. The artist actually introduced air bubbles into the glass when casting, somewhat similar to ‘Golden Boat’ above. However, the difference is that these bubbles are random and will never be the same in any 2 pieces of work, whereas the bubbles in ‘Golden Boat’ are precisely placed at the desired positions. The lotus in this piece also looks as if it’s floating upwards, due to the shapes of the petals.
One interesting thing: when i first saw this work, I was amazed how the artist created the palm and the lotus flower within the glass itself. However, the artist actually used the traditional Chinese last-wax casting method, or Pâte-de-verre method as known in the West. Which means she at first used a kind of glass to model the palm and the lotus, then she cast them both in the big block of another kind of glass (if i’m not wrong). Phew. That sounds more humanly possible doesnt it. I thought that she modelled them in the glass itself!

Anyway, through this joint exhibition, we can see the difference in styles of 2 great Liuli masters of the East and West. Weinberg’s works are smaller in size, tends to be more in favour of simplicity, and are more abstract. Whereas Yang’s works are mostly much larger, more complex and detailed, as well as more realistic. This has really been an eye-opener for me, and I’m now very interesting in glass art! XD *and i strongly encourage everyone to go visit the exhibition! Will be there till next sunday i think. Yupps!