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Roni Horn, Pink Tons, 2008, Solid cast glass, 48 x 48 x 48 in
Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe
Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art has a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the New York conceptual artist Roni Horn – whose can be seen as drawn from minimalism and conceptual art. Horn’s remarkable glass sculptures, for example, aren’t Donald Judd’s inert boxes but shifting and slippery objects that belie their solid mass. The most recent example of this work, “Pink Tons” (2008), occupies the foyer gallery of the ICA. At approximately five tons, the sculpture has been called the “largest piece of glass in the world,” according to the ICA’s new head curator, Helen Molesworth. Though the glass is virtually unmovable, the imperfections in its core “afford the viewer a dizzying, unsettling experience” according to the Bostonist.
The Glass Quarterly Blog has a great review of the show, with some other photos, but one has to marvel at the immensity of the casting and imagine the how much annealing time it would take to make that huge piece. Looking at the cracks in the piece, however, one would guess that whatever it took, it was not enough.