Laura Laine: Defining the Transitional Phase

Spazio Nobile presents Laura Laine‘s work Subtle Bodies starting this 5th of September. The visual artist and illustrator created six golden sculptures made in Ajeto, Novy Bor (Czech Republic) in collaboration with the two Czech glass masters Emil Kovac and Ales Vacek. It explores how memories of emotions, scents and other sense perceptions get trapped in objects and transform them. TLmagazine got together with the artist to talk about her experience in creating this marveling work.

TLmag: Your previous career was in fashion as an illustrator. How do you think this influenced your work, specifically the collection of Subtle Bodies?

Laura Laine (LL): I don’t see it as something influencing my sculptures, more like a journey. As if everything is a continuation of investigating certain themes and interests. With sculptures I can be free to explore these interests as illustrating is often client work. However, drawing still my starting point and the medium I best understand things with, so that’s how I always start the creation of the sculptures.

TLmag: Could you elaborate on the creation of Subtle Bodies? What is the collection exploring with its six pieces?

LL: The collection is about imagined energies that can inhabit and change spaces, plants and inanimate objects.

I wanted to create forms that are in a transitional phase to become something else, about to cross some border. I was inspired by the nature of glass material itself, the fact that it’s a non-crystalline solid. This means that the molecular arrangement of the solid glass resembles more a liquid than a solid matter. So even its static form can be seen as something temporary. For me, the reflective gold surfaces emphasize this transitional feeling as they dissolve the materiality of the pieces further.

TLmag: Could you talk about your experience with glass as material within your work? How was it to work together withAleš Vacek and Emil Kováč?

LL: It’s really a magical material to work with the material since I feel like it displays always new and different qualities depending on the forms we’re making. Working with Aleš and Emil was really a pleasure, Aleš is an incredibly skilled glassblower with whom it was very easy and smooth to work and communicate. I’ve worked with for a long time with Emil, and he was really irreplaceable in this project, working on every single different stage of creating the sculptures. Working with glass is always teamwork and requires giving up control to a certain extent at least because of the nature of the material, so it’s a totally different process than drawing.

TLmag: Is it possible to choose a favorite piece out of the five? If so, which one would you choose and why?

LL: It’s very difficult to pick one, I like them all for different reasons. For me, the making of Love Study sculpture was really interesting as a process because it needed a support construction inside. It’s not only the biggest piece we ever made but also the weight balance needed some thinking.

Subtle Bodies is on show at Spazio Nobile from September 5th to December 22nd, 2019.

Portrait by Diana Luganski