Opening Reception: Stig Persson | The Big Silence is tonight!

Stig Persson's opening reception for his debut solo exhibition in the USA is tonight (5 pm)! He arrived from Copenhagen (22 hours of travel...oh, gawd!) and has been resting and touring San Francisco for the last two days.

Stig's exhibition is beautiful, and even if you're not 'into' glass sculpture, I recommend this show with ★★★★★! You'll say I'm biased about this because it's at our gallery (naturally...), but know when it comes to glass sculpture there isn't that much out there that is as exciting and sculptural as the work we've been showing lately. What's the big deal?

Glass sculpture has been around for a long time. You've heard me repeat this time and again, and if you haven't, you know it. Because of its sparkling beauty, over the centuries it became commonly used as a decorative and design element (which is fine, really). With the advent of the studio glass movement, attributed to the 60s, glass was rediscovered as a sculptural medium, shaped in similar ways as bronze and marble, with the extra delight of unparalled optics, or light refractive quality.

Stig's work introduces a spectacularly clean-cut and refined vision of large scale glass sculpture. Yes, his work is fraught with architectural tensions in his use of form and optics, and possesses what is commonly thought of as a 'Scandinavian' aesthetic. More importantly, Stig's work is beautiful to behold. Light passes through his work, casting cool, meditative shadows within and without. Interior wraiths of color, built by heat and chemical reactions during the casting process are forever bound within the extreme lines of each sculpture. Exterior shadows of precise geometric quality, built during his cold-working process, cast on resting surfaces and strictly dependent on projected light, render unexpected visual gifts of color and line.

When I first viewed Stig's work at the home of his Danish gallerist, Anne Merete Grønlund, I was surprised at the scale and raw quality of his work on her walls. Since we opened his exhibition, 3 weeks ago, I've lived with his works surrounding my field of vision daily, and am truly enamored of the feeling of calm strength his work exudes.