Richard Remsen: Pulse Point
The Daniel Kany Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its June exhibition which features a major glass installation work by Rockland artist, Richard Remsen. The work, titled Glass Claws – Pulse Point, sits on a 100" square base. Above is a cantilevered set of plate-glass sheets printed with x-ray images of lobster shells. On the center of the structure is a pile of several dozen hand-blown glass lobster claws. Remsen will also be showing his well-known glass and bronze lure sculptures and a few of the individual glass claws.
Detail of Pulse Point: Glass Claws
Glass Claws – Pulse Point has been displayed only once before – as the artist's featured piece in the glass art exhibition at the Farnsworth Museum that ran from 2007-2008. Daniel Kany moderated a panel in conjunction with the exhibition that featured Maine's three preeminent glass artists: Benjamin Coombs, Eric Hopkins, and Richard Remsen. Notes Kany: "I was very pleased with the exhibition which featured glass artists who have worked in Maine. It underscored their connections to the Haystack Mountain School of Craft on Deer Isle, the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle, and the program at RISD. I was impressed by the three panelists: Their knowledge was excellent and their rapport was amazing. Then I was blown away by their work – in particular, Richard Remsen's major installation piece. It was the star of the show and one of the most compelling glass sculptures I have seen in the last 20 years. I knew it would be unreal in my Exchange Street gallery."
Farnsworth Museum Director Lora Urbanelli has written: "Remsen's major installation piece, Glass Claws-Pulse Point, explores the fantastic on a grand scale, using a seemingly haphazard pile of variously-colored blown-glass lobster claws as its central motif. The richly-hued and textured refuse heap levitates above the floor on cantilevered plate glass sheets, themselves infused with x-ray-cat scans of actual lobster claws.
Floating on top of images of their prototypes, the claws are a beautiful oddity. Like an archeological shell midden, the large mound of 'discarded shellfish' evokes a sense of wonder about its origins. The installation seems to reference the awe of discovery -- the unexpected, fantastic discards and their cold, analytical underpinnings."
Richard Furneaux Remsen studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and received his BFA in sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design in 1974. As an artist, Mr. Remsen studied glass blowing with Dale Chihuly, Fritz Driesbach, Dan Dailey and Dominic Labino among others. Remsen owns and operates The Foundry – a Rockland sculpture studio specializing in bronze sculpture as well as blown and cast glass.