Fred Wilson

Pace Gallery is pleased to present Fred Wilson’s solo exhibition in Korea with a small survey of the artist’s celebrated glass sculptures. Wilson’s use of glass has become a unifying element of his career ever since he first began to explore the possibilities of the medium nearly twenty years ago. Spanning over a decade of work, this exhibition will include his black-glass drips, ornate black mirrors, and Rezzonico-style chandeliers.

Since 2001, Wilson has worked alongside prominent American glass blower Dante Marioni with whom he first explored the possibilities of black-colored glass. During this time, Wilson produced his first black glass drips. The reflective surface of the blown glass and the teardrop-like forms suggest liquids such as ink, oil, blood and tar, and are blown from red glass so dense that it appears black. Wilson has continued to make drip works including Untitled (Akua'ba) (2010), a multi-piece installation topped with a black-glass sculpture cast from a traditional ritual fertility doll of the Asante people in Ghana. The glass doll extends from the wall looking down on a series of black drips that appear to cascade towards the floor—a nod to the fecundity associated with the African doll and the spread of the notion of the “Global African.” As Wilson explains, “Since the late 20th century the concept of the color black has shifted. Africans and those of the African Diaspora have embodied the color and flipped the negative meaning on its head and now view it as a powerful symbol of solidarity, born of our shared history and culture. My works in black are a mixture of positive affirmation, with a clear-eyed understanding of the racist tropes of the past.”