This graph-lined notebook features an image from Jennifer Wen Ma's 2016 installation Molar, for the exhibition "A Beautiful Disorder" at the Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK.
The image shows a cluster of individually hand-crafted glass sculptures in the shape of bodily fluids, tears, sperms, breasts, buttocks, embryos, cancer cells and other organic forms, suspended en masse to form a large chandeliar that measures three-meters in diameter.
Molar, created in 2016 for the Cass Sculpture Foundation, merges mythological, spiritual, and humanistic notions of Paradise, inspired by the surrounding West Sussex English gardens, and borrowing from distant Chinese landscape paintings, to create an otherworldly secret landscape. Upon approaching the work, one sees tall panels of semi-mirrored glass encasing a blackened garden-scape. Openings in the glass panels reveal a reflective garden path in a pond of black Chinese ink, speckled with illuminated glass spheres.
An enormous upside-down tree made from black paper hangs from the ceiling, nestling a large cluster of illuminated glass in shapes of teardrop, sperm, embryo, cancer cells and other organic forms, in quantity of hundreds to form a chandelier that measures approximately three meters in diameter. These precious gems appear to be the fruit put forth by the sprawling tree. Light filters through the cluster of glass, bouncing from one fruit to another. This tree chandelier reflects onto the surface of the ink pool, spotted here and there by the sixteen gold-flecked glass pieces that float in the ink. The glass orbs vary in size and emit light from within.
The mirrored panels blur the boundaries between the surrounding space and the installation, reflecting the installation while also permitting visibility to the space beyond. Viewers become immersed within the environment, and are free to walk and explore along the pathway. A simple and sparse music box style composition echoes within the inkscape through speakers.
Molar Graph Notebook
5" x 7.125"
Graph lined