When Portland, Oregon-based glassblowers Andi Kovel and Justin Parker met Harry Allen at ICFF in 2005, they were surprised to hear that the New York design stalwart was a fan of their work. They shouldn’t have been. Rooted in functional, concept-based expressions that defy traditional notions of glass art, Kovel and Parker’s craft reflects their history at Brooklyn’s UrbanGlass—where they worked as artists-for-hire for the likes of Maya Lin, Kiki Smith and Matthew Barney before moving West and founding their studio, Esque.
Collaborative by nature, they asked Allen if he’d ever worked with glass. ‘I was doing all these cast objects, and they were making super sick shapes,’ Allen remembers. They joined forces to create the 'Grid Bubble' series, where ivory-coloured glass spills out of metal cages, and presented them at Allen’s then-new showroom in New York’s Lower East Side.
A decade later, their second collection builds on the first with simpler shapes that give way to gloriously strange results. On view at Heller Gallery, 'Harry Allen Esque' comprises some two dozen vases and lit sculptures, some hung from the ceiling with near-invisible wire. Glass was blown directly into circular, square and triangular cutouts of stainless steel, which constricts and supports each vessel to form a unified whole.
‘Metal is the complete opposite of glass: it’s hard, cold, and noisy, while glass is clean and soft,’ Kovel says. ‘We’ve managed to marry them in a way where they are totally interactive and dependent on one another.’
The objects were made two months ago in Esque’s studio. All three pairs of hands are visible in each: Parker, a master gaffer (the main glassblower), was in charge of blowing. Kovel picked glass colours and forms, while Allen chose the metal frame and suggested how it might hang. Glassblowing’s unpredictable nature produced a few hurdles. Instead of staying in place when put onto molten glass, the heavy metal frames kept sliding toward the bottom. The glass kept blowing into spheres, forcing the trio to decipher how to make it do other, more interesting things.
Once complete, the whole thing had to go into the annealer, an oven that cools the glass, which turned the metal a purply orange hue. ‘In glassblowing you start with an idea, but the process designs it,’ Kovel says. They named the pieces using acronyms of each piece’s formal characteristics: 'MSHP' (Medium/Square/Hanging/Peach), 'RSUTWP' (Rectangle/Square/U/Table/White/Persimmon), and so forth.
While people have blown glass into metal before, few have managed to chart new aesthetic territory. ‘The aesthetic almost comes from somewhere else,’ Allen concludes. ‘It has everything to do with us, and nothing to do with us. It’s the sum of all the parts we set up.’
On display at New York's Heller Gallery, the pieces are made by blowing glass directly into circular, square and triangular cutouts of stainless steel, which constricts and supports each vessel to form a unified whole
‘Metal is the complete opposite of glass: it’s hard, cold, and noisy, while glass is clean and soft,’ says Andi Kovel of Esque. ‘We’ve managed to marry them in a way where they are totally interactive and dependent on one another’
All three pairs of hands are visible in each: Parker, a master gaffer (the main glassblower), was in charge of blowing. Kovel picked glass colours and forms, while Allen chose the metal frame and suggested how it might hang
While people have blown glass into metal before, few have managed to chart new aesthetic territory. ‘The aesthetic almost comes from somewhere else,’ Harry Allen says. ‘It has everything to do with us, and nothing to do with us. It’s the sum of all the parts we set up’
INFORMATION
‘Harry Allen Esque’ is on view until 28 May. For more information, visit the Heller Gallery’s website
Photography: Rune Stokmo
ADDRESS
Heller Gallery
303 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10001
-
Gingerbread City: architects sculpt London out of the season's favourite treatUntil December 29 in Chelsea, see London brought to life in a seasonal-appropriate medium by leading architects and designers
-
New Revox B77 MK III reel-to-reel tape recorder, and more cassette tape-based trickeryThe new Revox B77 MK III might be the ultimate analogue flex. In response, we’ve explored the outer reaches of cassette tape design
-
This picky customer finds ‘perfection’ at Nipotina, Mayfair’s new pizza and pasta jointWallpaper* contributing editor Nick Vinson reviews Nipotina, a new Italian restaurant in London offering a carefully edited menu of traditional dishes
-
Inside Luna Luna: the amusement park designed by artists lands in New York‘Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy’ – featuring rides by Basquiat, Lichtenstein, Hockney, Haring, and Dalí – has opened at The Shed
-
Henni Alftan’s paintings frame everyday moments in cinematic renditionsConcurrent exhibitions in New York and Shanghai celebrate the mesmerising mystery in Henni Alftan’s paintings
-
Inside Jack Whitten’s contribution to American contemporary artAs Jack Whitten exhibition ‘Speedchaser’ opens at Hauser & Wirth, London, and before a major retrospective at MoMA opens next year, we explore the American artist's impact
-
Frieze Sculpture takes over Regent’s ParkTwenty-two international artists turn the English gardens into a dream-like landscape and remind us of our inextricable connection to the natural world
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next DoorThe Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New YorkViolet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American WestThe artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
