Masumi Igarashi
Masumi lgarashi’s work is inspired by the relationships between herself and the world. She tries to capture and explore them. She finds the traces for this in the seemingly insignificant aspects of life, which she processes in her sculptures. She often combines her glass objects with organic materials such as earth or wood, for example in the object “Human = Vessel”. An everyday useful object such as a shirt, actually made of flexible material, is made into a glass form and thus appears in a completely new point of view. Other everyday things such as vessels or tables are also alienated and placed in this new context. The glass shirt symbolizes the human being who is related to the earth as a symbol of the origin of all life.
This connection also exists in the two books made of glass with the title “Turn over”. The pages of the glass books lying on tree trunks as pedestals appear as if they have been opened by the wind.
The objects shown in the exhibition also show the variety of glass processing techniques: Slumping is the name of the technique used to produce some very filigree objects. The heads modeled from Päte de verre (German “glass dough”) have a completely different character.
It is also this diversity that fascinates the artist about the material glass. The field of tension between the beauty of the material and the rigidity of the movement is the challenge for Masumi lgarashi in her work.
Her works are kept in private collections in Europe, Japan and the US.
In 2022 she took part in two exhibitions to which she has been invited several times:
– 12th International Exhibition “Glass Sculpture and Garden” in Münster, Germany
– GLAS 2022 – 8th Immenhausen Glass Prize, Glass Museum Immenhausen, Germany
In 2002 and 2005 she received the 1st glass art award in Tubbergen, the Netherlands.
In 2007 she was awarded the 2nd prize at the International Sculpture Exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany.
In 2002 she received special recognition at the 4th international Exhibition Glass Sculpture and Garden.
The Artist about her Art:
My creative activity started with the material glass. The blind fascination with transparency and colored glass in the initial phase – the beauty that glass carries within itself soon stood in front of me like a wall against which I tried to achieve a deeper aesthetic. This material still accompanies my art to this day.
Important elements in my glass processing is the natural shape, which is caused in the glass furnace by changing the state of aggregation and gravity. Meticulous preparatory work is important to me in order to achieve ideal randomness in the oven and also to recognize unwilling randomness.
For my art I am looking for forms that appear concrete and abstract at the same time. There, for example, concrete objects, their purpose or their meaning are abolished. In my more recent work, I represent this endeavor in forms of the overcast state. My interest here is also about “obscuring” and how one evaluates, expects or demands “transparency” in today’s world in everyday life.
