CORA JANE GLASSER
My work speaks to paradoxes inherent in urban structure: past and present; presence
and absence; solid and void; fragility and sturdiness; permanence and mutability. I
view these paradoxes through the layered lens of archaeology. The floor component
of the lobby installation shows layers of density, translucency and transparency to
reveal in varying degrees architecture no longer in existence, buried beneath traces
of transition. The suspended component represents the new, but still, just another
layer. Though hardly ever depicting people, I examine those layers as representative
of human activity. If we dig deeply enough, all that remains of that activity are the
remnants of architecture and the artifacts of behavior within those lost structures.
When I look at the architecture in my “place”, New York City, I see it as an illusion
of permanence. Rather than a complete building, I perceive bits of shape, color, light,
space and activity—much of which occurs in the process of building or demolishing.
This can be seen in the painted glass stelae in the back gallery, representing, in
miniature, art as incorporated into an architecture project. I use architecture as a
reference in a generic sense, not as in “buildings”. My work, therefore, employs
architecture as an armature, a shaky framework to help me depict in either 2 and 3
dimensions, what is not seen, the voids of history, the ever-changing present and the
future. Time.
and absence; solid and void; fragility and sturdiness; permanence and mutability. I
view these paradoxes through the layered lens of archaeology. The floor component
of the lobby installation shows layers of density, translucency and transparency to
reveal in varying degrees architecture no longer in existence, buried beneath traces
of transition. The suspended component represents the new, but still, just another
layer. Though hardly ever depicting people, I examine those layers as representative
of human activity. If we dig deeply enough, all that remains of that activity are the
remnants of architecture and the artifacts of behavior within those lost structures.
When I look at the architecture in my “place”, New York City, I see it as an illusion
of permanence. Rather than a complete building, I perceive bits of shape, color, light,
space and activity—much of which occurs in the process of building or demolishing.
This can be seen in the painted glass stelae in the back gallery, representing, in
miniature, art as incorporated into an architecture project. I use architecture as a
reference in a generic sense, not as in “buildings”. My work, therefore, employs
architecture as an armature, a shaky framework to help me depict in either 2 and 3
dimensions, what is not seen, the voids of history, the ever-changing present and the
future. Time.
