THE PROCESS

Construction Lovers 

In my work, I observe and discover how in the first place glass reacts towards manipulations during the blowing process. Glass has this unique viscosity when it is hot, it drops smoothly like honey and it moves softly around the pipe. When glass is hot it is fluent, liquid and moving, just like honey. It is red, yellow, white and it moves like crazy, which means it can develop the craziest shapes ever. Glass has such a way of shaping itself, if you give it a little freedom, it will do so. I like hot glass to fold and to twist, inflate and collapse and I like it to find its own shapes. I want each piece to be different, even when they are similar. I realised that I like the movement and the kind of randomness of the shapes, which glass has, if you let it. I

If glass cooled down its just a certain moment of a movement. The dynamic and motion of hot glass is the basis of my work. From there I start an investigation and reconstruction where I also use different media than glass. For example, printing with acrylic colour, video, sound, but all media refers to the origin of the frozen moment of movement.

 Deconstruction

My basic idea is to investigate the materiality, identity and states of existence of a blown ‘double bubble glass’ object, I call it ‘An Object’, approximately in the size of two fists. 

To investigate those forms and to grasp the Gestalt of these explorative pieces, I grind them and make prints from the rim. Almost like an autopsy or cross-section, I slice the forms and then trace their cross-sections to create prints on paper. This I do until they are physically gone. Nevertheless they continue to exist in a different form of being. I wonder if one can understand those glass shapes better if they are sliced and ‘reduced’ to a sequence of two-dimensional images? Or does this take away the ‘magic’ of the whole piece? What happens if you try to re-build the glass form? Can you reconstruct it like it was before by using the prints as clues?

Repeatinfinition 8 1/2 out of 10 

video installation, glass dusk, mouth-blown glass-object 

This video is based on 8 ½ different grinded glass objects. 

I blew 10 different glass objects, made of two bubbles (Lovers). Solidified and melded together under their own dynamics, glass bubbles, after a long labour intensive, destructive and constructive process of sanding and grinding regained shape as imprints and videos. The imprints and videos are captured evidence from all stages in the grinding process. The question arises if, and how, there still is a essential relation to the glass bubbles with which the process started.

Reconstruction

I am interested in the reconstruction, because it is based on the traces ‘An Object’ left behind. Depending on which material (plastic, paper, glass) I choose and use, the reconstructed object gains a totally different appearance from the original.  They still carry information (truth) of the original object, in the same time they are independent and have autonomous identity. It is a replication without being a replication.

Lover11/127 reconstruction (my soul), 256cm x 50cm x 40cm, paté de verre,  2017,  Jenny Ritzenhoff

This is the reconstruction of a blown glass object.