Stephen Glassman, submitted artwork
Stephen Glassman
Sculpture, Installation
Los Angeles
Deaf and unable to speak as a young child, art became Stephen’s primary developmental language. Though he eventually gained full hearing and speaking abilities, visual thinking and expression is fused to his core DNA. Glassman first sparked international attention with his giant bamboo installations in Los Angeles neighborhood sites devastated by disaster and uprising. Anarchic weavings of collapse and resilience, these expressionist works proved to be a springboard to the large-scale public, as well as the intimate private works he creates today. Stephen was pulled into the realm of sculpture via his experience in theatre scenography, where he acquired that world’s uniquely fundamental skills of collaboration, scale, concept and production. His studio maintains this practice through collaborations and venues that include the Moscow Circus, Jonathan Borofsky, Robert Irwin, Bread & Puppet Theatre, Philippe Petit, Issey Miyake, Bjarke Ingels, Paris Opera, Cannes Film Festival Court Metrage, and more.
Works
Stephen Glassman, submitted artwork
My work is an inquiry of site, scope, and impact – a scribing of the intuitive human gesture in a social context. It is the medium of spectacle, generated from a rigorous studio practice based in drawing. The breadth of work ranges from archival to ephemeral, intimate to monumental. At the core it explores a collision of opposites – control and accident, nature and urban, public and private, object and moment – to strike a chord that rings true. Ultimately I aspire to create works of social resonance – not through narrative or commentary, but via dissonant mash-ups of context and content. It is aesthetic anarchy as cultural construct.
