Galia Amsel, Bullseye Connection Gallery, Portland

Galia Amsel: Alternative Views
Bullseye Connection Gallery, Portland
May 1 - 29, 2004

The Bullseye Connection Gallery presents Alternative Views, an exhibition of Galia Amsel’s contemporary sculptures in kilnformed glass. Alternative Views is a collection from the artist’s recent solo museum exhibition at the Museo de Arte en Vidrio de Alcorcon, Madrid.

Galia Amsel is recognized as one of the best British glass artists of her generation. Her sculptural cast glass works exhibited in solo shows in Britain, France, the USA and now Spain emphasize what the contemporary studio glass authority Dan Klein has called a "geometry of mystery".

Dan Klein’s writing about Galia Amsel’s work describes her ability to contain a world of movement and color in a minimal form: “It is impressive how much varied movement and rhythm [Amsel] manages to achieve from piece to piece within the simple variations of her contained forms and restrained colours. Texture, whether smooth and shiny or with the pitting of lunar landscape is also used to great effect. The different surface textures add sensuality. There is, particularly in her more recent work, a great variety of carefully controlled light and shade, or to describe it in another way, a great variety of moods. The darkness of night and the brightness of day are juxtaposed to create contrast and atmosphere...Her work refers to landscape, to movement, to atmospherics or to a combination of all of these and it manages to convey its message with the utmost simplicity.”

The kilnformed glass medium Galia Amsel uses to achieve her unique depth and colors holds particular challenges. The technical expertise required for working with kiln-cast glass is not that of the glass blower (an athletic exercise), but of the engineer and sometimes the seer: a knowledge of how glass will move within a mold, under high heat, untouched by the artist. Her finished works are generally of tabletop size in basic forms - circles, rectangles, squares that are broken or cut in a way that emphasizes frozen movement, whether it be of man or machine.

“In a sense [Galia Amsel] choreographs movement, capturing a moment of balance that has almost bodily tension,” says Dan Klein. “The rhythm, movements, balance and tension referred to are those of moving parts, whether they be related to the world of humans or the world of machines. ‘I like things that work – machinery, bridges, things that fit together and move, work together,’ she says...Her visual imagery relates to the mechanics of movement. Her work, like the work of skilled photographers, freezes a gestural or operational split second, making one aware of the structural detail of things in motion.” Galia Amsel’s work echoes with both stillness and force, like pieces from a machine whose function is left to the viewer to discern.

THE BULLSEYE CONNECTION GALLERY
300 NW Thirteenth Avenue, Portland, OR 97209
www.bullseyeconnectiongallery.com