London-based Shane Porter showed his glass-on-ceramic sculptures in SHOW 2015 the Royal College of Art’s Ceramics & Glass graduate exhibition. The work in his exhibition, titled The Pause, pairs ultra-controlled slipcast forms with the naturally slumping properties of molten glass.
Above Image: Shane Porter, A place in the dark II, Earthenware, Glass, 2015. Photography by Sylvain Deleu.
In his statement, Porter explains the work, inspired by the transitory world of dreams and memory:
“Lost, hidden in the shadows lies a strange world rarely seen but deeply felt. Its landscape shifts like fog or smoke exaggerating, disguising and blurring, in a perpetual state of becoming. An ever-changing jigsaw of images, words, sounds and smells that drift by like a cloud that before you can even acknowledge, disappears again. By capturing it in flux it becomes frozen in time for us to contemplate. Its mystery and illusion becoming an eternal pause.”
His ceramic forms are borrowed from modern design, monochrome with gentle curves for a fluid object with no edges or corners, related to cars or electronics. They are so clean that the images nearly look digitally rendered. These forms are used as the subject of the pieces, something for the melting glass to adhere to and describe. Porter heats the glass on the ceramic until it begins to slump over the curves. The resulting comparison of the interacting materials gives perspective to the hardness and viscosity.
Porter poetically explains the effect of his process:
“By interrupting the movement and fluidity of glass I am able to physically capture a moment in time; creating stillness and silence out of chaos.”
Justin Crowe is a Writer and Director of Operations at CFile.
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