Placeholder

Saturday April 24, 2010 | by Andrew Page

Letter to the Editor: Deborah Czeresko on the double-walled glasses not mentioned in a recent articl

FILED UNDER: Letters to the Editor

Diller + Scofidio, Fountain (from the "Vice/Virtue" series), 1997. Blown glass with hypodermic needle. H 4, W 2 7/8, D 2 7/8 in. (tallest) Henry Urbach Architecture, New York.

The article about the fun-fueled design company Fred and Friends in the Spring 2010 issue of GLASS magazine (“Vacuum-Sealed” by Analisa Coats Bacall) featured flame-worked double-walled kitschy gag glasses including “Hopside Down” (2009) and “Saltside Out” (2009). The one-liner glass series resembled, but made no mention of, “Vice/Virtue” (1997), a series of glass forms produced over a decade ago by acclaimed architectural team Diller + Scofidio. Placed side by side, their works could be a double-walled vessel showdown between irony and gag, Diller + Scofidio’s work being the former and Fred and Friends the latter.

Diller + Scofidio, Reservoir (from the "Vice/Virtue" series) 1997. Blown glass. H 4, W 2 7/8, D 2 7/8 in. (each). Henry Urbach Architecture, New York.

Diller + Scofidio are known for their ground-breaking architectural projects and multidisciplinary approach, which includes sculpture, installation, performance, and design. Their work is concerned with the interface of humans andtheir social structures such as the Blur Building (2002), a man-made fog cloud with a platform that can support 400 people installed over a lake Neuchatel in Switzerland. The Vice/Virtue glasses were produced in 1997 for the exhibition Glassmanifest, in Leerdam, Netherlands and according to Diller + Scofidio the Vice/Virtue glasses, “accommodate the dual pursuits of health and hedonism that characterizes contemporary culture.” Using dark humor they reveal the secret habits enabled by ordinary drinking vessels. The most dramatic piece in the series, The Fountain (1997), is comprised of a glass syringe used as the stem of a champagne glass that when it is plunged dispenses a green liquid into the cup. Containing both high and low forms of “substance abuse” Fountain (1997) is an object which simultaneously offers associations of horror and glamor. The glasses are conceptually in line with their other high-art manifestations negotiating between corporeality and processes of thought, that include Pain/Pleasure Medicine Cabinet (1991), No Means Yes (1997), and Clean Body/Dirty Mind (1994).

Both Fred and Friends and Diller + Scoffidio use humor and duality as a conceptual basis for their pieces. The Vice/Virtue series glasses are theatrical objects which use dark humor to make associations about addiction. Fred and Friends, on the other hand, have created objects based on one-liners and gags and whose stated purpose is to “put a smile on someone’s face”.

Both collections offer an interesting proposition, but the distinction between them is derived from how are the objects consumed, by the mouth or by the mind? Fred and Friends use a similar method to Diller + Scoffidio but with a simplified concept and a functional construction making it accessible to the masses. While Fred and Friends witty kitsch objects will make it into more homes as an affordable and entertaining experience, Diller + Scofidio’s Vice/Virtue series will exist as discrete objects in galleries and museums with a labyrinth of associations.

An accomplished glassblower, Deborah Czeresko is a New York City-based artist and designer.

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.