Pernille Braun – Contemporary Glass
For contemporary artist Pernille Braun, the process of glassmaking and the material itself, holds a sense of wonder and freedom, which allows her to create her distinctive sculptures. She presents a selection of new work at Puls Gallery through March 12, 2022.
Rather than “out with the old in with the new”, Danish artist, Pernille Braun, wants to take the old in the new and new in the old, mix them around a bit and see what develops. In January 2021, she started on a series of glass sculptures titled, “Selected Other,” which were founded on ideas and materials that the artist had been carrying around for two decades, and as she says, “were waiting to establish themselves [in my work].” The series reflects more than 20-years of artistic research and engagement, “a long, drawn-out experience floating from element to element and united in one body of work.” On view at Puls, Braun presents a selection of these abstract glass sculptures. Colourful and dynamic, the sculptures appear like 3-D drawings on the wall, completely unexpected and full of personality.
Pernille Braun studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Art, School of Design, and gained a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in London in 2008. She has been sculpting with glass for more than two-decades, drawn in by the materials “ambiguous and mystical character,” she says, and its ability to be “transformed from soft to hard, erased, covered, or re-arranged” before it holds its final form. In this new series, “Selected Other”, the sculptures reflect this sense of freedom and movement – seen more often in gestural or abstract painting, here solidified in glass.
Each sculpture in the exhibition is made of 3-5 different elements, each representing different structures and stages of melted glass. To get that textured, drippy black and white surface in the centre of “Selected Other #3”, for example, multiple strands of glass beads were strung on a copper thread, tied around a metal pipe and melted. The glass was then turned around and extra glass added to the final firing or sagging, where gravity took its course, after which she worked on the cold glass to clean, cut and remove excess material.
Braun states, “The work experiments with the transformation and combination of form and structure, and the complexity and paradox of having a seemingly dissolving form acting as a base for the hanging object shaping around it.”
“Selected Other” is on view at Puls Contemporary Ceramics through March 12, 2022
@pernillebraun
@pulsceramics
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