Simple And Vast: The Way Of Annealing A Piece Of Glass

Summer and autumn are not over. In November, the summer heat in Shanghai gradually faded, and in a twinkling it was the season of yellow leaves. On November 7, Shanghai Glass Museum held a special exhibition of "annealing" for the fifth anniversary - "reset" officially opened. "Annealing" project started in 2015. In the past five years, the museum has commissioned eight contemporary artists to create large-scale glass art installation works with different characteristics by challenging the boundary of glass materials. On the basis of the achievements of the past five years, this special exhibition extends the exhibition from indoor exhibition to outdoor exhibition. From the "containers" which are all over the museum park to reload the exhibits, it presents visitors with a new viewing path and scene experience. By breaking the fixed exhibition mode of Art Museum, it also "reset" people's thinking about the existing world and emphasize the value of contemporary art.

This glass, not glass

As soon as I stepped into the park, several huge light blue containers came into view. The top of each container is equipped with two light pipe hanging cables, and containers with different artists' names are scattered in every corner of the park. At first glance, it is just like several "outsiders" who are placed in outdoor space out of thin air.

Liu Jianhua's container was placed in the most prominent position on the right side facing the museum entrance. Peeping into the container, you can see that there are four pure white walls like the traditional "white box" exhibition hall, while the box wall leading to the end of the box is hollowed out. Around a square hole with outdoor scenery, it is surrounded by a picture frame made of glass and cement. This was originally Liu Jianhua's work "breathing landscape" in "annealing" in 2018, but now it has been given a new meaning in this special exhibition of the fifth anniversary. Instead of aimlessly looking out of the window, the painting frame was replaced by a bright red pillar standing on the left side of the museum gate, Liu Jianhua's second work "monument". The bright red pillars are made of glass and carbon fiber, but the special feature is that Liu Jianhua completely wiped out the original thin, transparent and light properties of glass in his creation, and replaced it with the heavy texture like stone. It is worth noting that there are still many cracks on the glass "stele". Although the cracks are regarded as failed products in the traditional glass making process, these vivid body textures can be preserved in the context of contemporary art.

Liu Jianhua's painting "breathing landscape" is his second work "monument". Materials and pictures

On the Middle Road, you can see the container containing Liao Fei's works. His work looks extremely simple, with several transparent glass panels stacked in series. In the middle of these glass panels, there are hollowed out circles from top to bottom and from large to small. From the periphery, it looks like standing in the water and witnessing the ripples produced when a drop of water falls into different planes of the water, which is very visual impact. "Both water and glass are transparent, giving people a sense of lightness," Liao Fei told reporters in the 21st century economic report. Although it seems light, glass is actually a very heavy material. " It is understood that the work "continuous plane 2.2m3" on display weighs 2 tons. Even the engineers who were proficient in load-bearing design in the museum thought that it was impossible to build it safely. Later, through the construction of an additional set of gantry steel frames, the work was restored from the manuscript to reality. As for the inspiration of this cross-border art experiment, Liao Fei said: "the glass we usually use has its own industrial logic, which is not the same as the manual production logic. We need to understand more about the production methods behind them."

Matter and glass beyond matter

In addition to challenging people's imagination visually, artists even try to use glass in the physical sense to respond to more abstract problems in contemporary art. Walking deep into the park, you can find the glass sausage by Yang Xinguang and the color film with repeated patterns by Bi Rongrong.

In Yang's previous works, wood, clay and stone were the "protagonists" of his sculptures. However, this time, he was invited to create with glass as the medium, which made him feel "the crystal clear edge is rich in dangerous beauty" from the sharp broken glass. The new feeling also opened up a new situation for the bottleneck of his creation. He told reporters that at the beginning, the attempt to shape the glass sausage was to prevent the glass from breaking, so the shape could not be too large, which made the design scheme less free. However, the concept of "heartbreak" was unexpectedly gained by simply borrowing the fragile nature of glass. In his poetry, the sharp edge of the broken glass is often used to express the fragility of his poetry. This method of describing spiritual experience from the perspective of physiological senses is actually more in line with the experience of contemporary people. New technologies have enlarged and extended people's senses, and spiritual perception needs more sensory stimulation to appreciate. "

In the middle of several camphor trees with yellow leaves, the container belonging to bi Rongrong is quietly placed in a corner. She is good at graphic creation, and she also made a bold attempt this time. Taking the wave pattern as the starting point, Bi Rongrong explored the possibility of realizing two-dimensional design in three-dimensional space: large pieces of glass gradually changing color from yellow to blue, glass tubes like lines or circles or rolls, and large curved glass with spiral twist patterns. Every ingenious device tries to prove that the line between two and three dimensions can be broken without obstacles. She confessed that due to the lack of understanding of the properties and production technology of glass, the idea of flying in the sky sometimes conflicts with the traditional glass technology. So she has revised it nine times. Some of the difficulties are solved by technical teachers, while others require artists to modify their plans to "make a compromise.". However, she always insisted on the goal of her artistic creation: "I want to find a relationship between painting and space. Painting is often a very private behavior or a very private object. When it breaks away from its plane and then grows into space, its publicity begins to happen. I'm looking for some possibilities in this conversion process. "

Provide spiritual home

"Annealing" is an indispensable part of glass art creation, and also the key to the final glass forming. The hot melt is molded at the temperature of thousands of degrees centigrade, and then goes through four annealing steps: heating, heat preservation, slow cooling and fast cooling, so as to slow down the cooling rate and reduce the permanent stress of the glass. Although the process of change is controllable, there are also unpredictable unknowns and contingencies. Zhang Lin, founder, curator and CEO of Shanghai Glass Museum, is familiar with this feeling of uncertainty and infinite possibility.

Shanghai Glass Museum was built and opened in 2011. After visiting hundreds of different types of museums around the world, Zhang Lin's vague ideal concept was gradually born: to be a museum of "future". He told reporters: "this" future "focuses on the concept of contemporary art, not the power of science and technology. We want to build a new system of "Museum + art gallery." The Five-Year "annealing" project is the best opportunity to practice this concept. He said: "by connecting with craftsmen and factories, we can help artists realize some ideas of contemporary art, and let them create together, so that art and technology can be organically combined."

One of the most popular sayings mentioned by Zhang Lin is "leading the lifestyle of museums". "The joy of cultural consumption, or the joy of art, may bring you a lifetime of memory," he said. I hope to bring some thoughts to the audience through these works, shorten the distance between the public and the museum, and let the public have a sense of belonging to the museum. The ultimate goal is to lead everyone to enjoy the lifestyle of the museum. "

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