Joy Wulke
Here, There, and Everywhere
Joy Wulke’s primary medium is glass, which she has used throughout her career in a wide variety of contexts. Wulke’s artistic practice has involved sculpture, installation art, public art, and highly theatrical performance pieces that often include elements of dance and music. In this array of media, glass sometimes appears alone, in several different forms, or in combination with other materials. And Wulke exploits glass for its full range of meanings and associations. These include, but are by no means limited to, physical and spiritual illumination, a permeable boundary, the metaphysics of the mirror, strength and fragility, and order versus chaos.
For Trainscape, the artist uses clear, frosted, and dichroic glass, mirrors, lights, and rock candy (a crystalline structure) to create a magical place where reflection and refraction shatter conventional notions of time, space, and place. The motion of the train along with its multiple images in the surrounding glass surfaces further activates the overall perceptual complexity – it seems at once here, there, and everywhere. The idea of a crystal city has loomed large in the human imagination. Wulke’s installation takes its place alongside the Emerald City of Oz, the modernist utopian architecture of Bruno Taut, the contemporary glass skyscrapers of Daniel Libeskind – and visions of heaven itself.
Image: Joy Wulke, Here, There, and Everywhere, (detail), 2007, Lent by the Artist