Tora Urup

Encased Nilegreen

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Previously exhibited at Basel 2021.

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Description/

In her trompe l’œil glass sculptures, Danish artist Tora Urup (b. 1960) explores the specific role played by color and material in our perception of volume and space. Since 2001, Urup has shown a particular interest in exploring the visual effects obtained within a series of circular glass sculptures in vibrant colors of thin opaque and thick transparent glass, revealing the artist’s interest in altering archetypes like the glass bowl into dreamlike objects. By combining subtle colors and making them interplay with each other by varying the glass thickness, Tora Urup enables new spatial perceptions that reverse our conventional understanding of the traditional glass bowl. The interior volumes of these trompe l’œil sculptures seem to float independently of their exterior, and by the careful juxtaposition and treatment of cut, polished, and mattbrushed surfaces, she is creating a genuine illusion of a seemingly infinite and liquid space inside a physically restrained volume.

Tora Urup

designer

Tora Urup is a glass designer and artist working independently and in collaboration with glass manufacturers, individual craftsmen and glass factories mainly in the Czech Republic and Japan.

Preoccupied with familiar objects such as bowls and glassware, Tora Urup is interested in how we might experience and perceive these common objects anew, both as functional objects and individual pieces that could be described as visual interpretations of the known object.

Structure, colour and thickness of glass are exploited to produce a body of work that questions our conventional understanding of how glass reacts. For example: in a glass bowl a trompe l’oeil effect is created in which the interior volume seemingly floats independently of its exterior. Through a careful juxtaposition of coloured glass and the treatment of cut and polished surfaces an illusion of infinite and liquid space inside a physically restraint volume is created.

This body of work is reflecting Tora Urup’s investigation into the specific role played by color and material and the influence of light in our perception of volume and space, and reveals her interest in altering archetypes like the glass bowl into dreamlike objects

Tora Urup studied in Japan, Denmark and Great Britain and has exhibited her work worldwide. She is represented by Galerie Maria Wettergren, Paris