ARTIST USES LUMINOUS GLASS TO CREATE MESMERISING INSTALLATION AND KITCHEN WARE

Rui Sasaki, a Japanese artist, creates captivating glass sculptures that eloquently depict the changing weather. She creates both small and large luminous installations using phosphorescent glass, a substance that can store light and glow in the dark. These pieces, which range from abstract objects to kitchenware to cascading raindrops, appear in dimly lit rooms like blue-tinted spectres.

Sasaki, originally from Kanto in central Japan, moved to Hokuriku, an area renowned for its more erratic weather, and it piqued his interest in weather patterns. She told a news outlet, "I was surprised by the great physical and mental impact the climate had on me when I first moved here, as well as by the leaden Hokuriku skies and unsettled weather, the heavy rainfall and high humidity. I started working in phosphorescent glass because, in Hokuriku, one marvels at the slightest interval of clear skies, and I wanted to visualise and celebrate that hint of sunlight, and record and preserve it somehow. The phosphorescent glass mixture used stores light of a wavelength close to that of sunlight, with this stored light then glowing in the dark.”

When guests first walk into the gallery to view Sasaki's artwork, the darkness of the space will overwhelm them. Then the sculpture's faint forms will become more visible as their eyes adjust. She goes on, "If a visitor stays in the gallery for a long time, the artwork will glow weakly in the darkness for the subsequent visitor." "As the viewing duration increases, the phosphorescent glass's light gradually fades until the gallery is completely dark. This could happen a day or a minute later, based on how the viewer moves.

Sasaki has had solo and group exhibitions of his experimental art all over the world. She is currently employed with Kanazawa Utatsuya Kogei Kobo in Ishikawa, Japan, as a specialist and faculty in Glass. In May, she will have an exhibition at Gallery Diego Omotesando in Tokyo. "I believe that my practice involves using glass—a substance whose consistent duality invites us to consider presence and absence and which enables us to preserve and record—to confirm my existence through the investigation of a "intimacy" that I have discovered, amidst subtle day-to-day realisations.