Fred Wilson on Progress in the Art World

For almost 20 years, conceptual artist Fred Wilson has been working with the unforgiving material of black Murano glass, creating large and exquisite chandeliers in the Venetian and Ottoman traditions, woven through with his own particular research interests.

In 2003, he showed a group of these works at the Venice Biennale, where the chandeliers implicitly explored the history of the city’s African population, who are often represented in Venetian art—but almost always as an aside, and rarely as the main focus of the work.

He expanded his interests when he presented another set of chandeliers at the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, where the works—now modeled on Ottoman design—elaborated the history of Venetian–Ottoman relations.

A group of these exquisite and sometimes foreboding works are now on view at Pace Gallery‘s new location in New York, taking advantage of the space’s 19 foot ceilings. On the occasion of the show, we spoke with the artist.