Monumental Chiseled Glass Sculpture on Loan to the Sculpture Park at FIU.
January 2011.
American Master glass sculptor Henry Richardson’s Tikkun (“Healing the World”) will be on view at the entrance of the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University beginning Tuesday, January 24, 2011. The approximately 5000-pound, 6-foot diameter chiseled glass orb is on special loan courtesy of his gallery following its appearance in the First Edition of the Miami-Miami Beach Sculpture Biennial.
Tikkun also reminds viewers of FIU’s location in the global city of Miami. Tikkun’s color recalls the blue green waters that surround Miami and serve as a medium for interconnecting the city with the rest of the world. Constructed of hundreds of individually chiseled pieces of glass fused together to form a massive crystalline whole, Tikkun invokes both the fragility of our tropical environment and the strength of our diverse community. Made of commercial grade glass, used in the construction of hurricane-resistant windows for residential and commercial buildings, Tikkun serve as a metaphor for technology’s role in building a safer, more secure world.
John Fairbanks, Emeritus Curator of the American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has described Tikkun as a “masterpiece.” “The visual impact of this sculpture is almost overwhelming because of its size and material composition. The sphere towers over the audience, yet the transmittance of light through the glass prevents the sculpture [from] assuming the visual mass of a solid object. Technically, the construction of the sculpture is astonishing.”
The sculpture’s inspiration is the Hebrew phrase Tikkun Olam translated as “repairing the world.” According to Hebrew oral tradition, the material world was infused with Divine Light at the creation of the universe. As our world has evolved it has become broken and the light has scattered; the great task of humanity is to reconstruct the unified light present in the beginning. When any one person engages in helping their community, that person becomes part of a collective force that mends the world. The phrase has come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice. Global Learning for Global Citizenship is FIU’s roadmap for enabling every student to act as an engaged, global citizen.
Tikkun complements the exhibitions opening during Target Wednesday After Hours on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 including Gran Torino: Italian Contemporary Art; My Eyes Have Seen by Robert Farber; The Tale of the Unknown Island by Esther Villalobos and Mar Solis; As of 24-03-07 by Maria Brito and Women in Motion: Fitness, Sport, and the Female Figure in the Wolfsonian-FIU Teaching Gallery at The Frost Art Museum.
Frost Art Museum – FIU
10975 SW 17th Street
Miami, FL 33199
305.348.2890
http://thefrost.fiu.edu
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