Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking / MMFA

Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal

By Susan Wacker-Donle
PHOTOS: Susan Wacker-Donle

“I’m obsessed with color-never saw one I didn’t like”-Dale Chihuly

Experiencing Chihuly’s latest exhibit at the MMFA is like tripping the light fantastic through a fantasy garden of glass. Galleries filled with breathtaking color, mesmerizing reflections, and elaborate organic shapes cascade from an illuminated vacuum of darkness surrounding the viewer in patterns of light.

An explosion of orange and yellow glass titled “The Sun” greets you on the steps of the museum. This 16 .5 foot diameter sculpture jumps off the cool stone museum façade, sparkling in the Canadian autumn light. You cannot help but smile and be warmed by it’s rays of glistening glass tendrils.
"Turquois Reeds": Dale Chihuly 

Inside, ascending the staircase to the Galleries of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, visitors are framed by “The Persian Colonnade”. Walls encrusted with vibrant fire colored glass florals, lead you upwards to the tranquility of The Turquoise Reeds, a forest of glass rods springing from trunks of red cedar. 

From here you encounter “The Persian Ceiling”, a cacophony of transparent shapes layered overhead. Undulating conical florals arranged in color groupings radiate backlit chromatic splendor. Concentric swirling lattices produce hypnotizing, kaleidoscopic reflections on the chamber walls.
"Pineapple Chandelier": Dale Chihuly

The next gallery displays “The Chandeliers and The Tower”, a magical interior of fantastic stalagmite and stalactite forms with graceful coiling tendrils that pierce brilliant light thru the blackness of space. The “Towers” are Chihuly’s chandeliers “pictured upside down”. Re-created specifically for this exhibition is “The Pineapple Chandelier”; a multi-pod shaped ribbed and twisted array of fervent rouge glass. This blown glass sculpture is constructed on a steel frame, weighs several hundred pounds, dramatically hanging from the ceiling reflecting into a black mirrored pool.

Continuing on, Chihuly opens up our eyes with “Mille Flori”, a play on the Italian word “milleflori” meaning “one thousand flowers”. This environment made up of spires, grasses, reeds, herons and sea grasses “embodies his lifelong passion for nature and flowers” inspired by memories of his mother’s botanical gardens. Additional environments “The Boats” and “The Glass Forest #6” contain orbs of color and texture reminiscent of Venetian glass art, brilliant flower stems and vines as well as dozens of flattened globs of blown white illuminated neon glass.
Bowl Detail from "The Macchia Forest": Dale Chihuly

The final room, “Macchia Forest” (“macchia” means “spotted” in Italian) displays large, ruffled bowl shaped objects glowing brilliantly upon black steel pedestals. Here, Dale and his team of talented artisans used the full range of 300 colors available to them in the hotshop. These presentations of organic textures and unique reflective surfaces such as simulated mother of pearl are brought to life with dramatic columns of light.

“Dale Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking” is an exhibition of hand blown mega objects, a grandiose abstract interpretation of the natural world using a fractal glass language that captivates the imagination and stimulates the soul. This exhibition closes October 27th. Current exhibitions include the Halycon Gallery in London till November 10th, 2013 with ongoing installations at The Seattle Center, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and the Tacoma Art Museum. If you find yourself in Las Vegas be sure to see the “Fiori di Como” installation in the Bellagio Hotel Lobby.
"The Persian Ceiling": Dale Chihuly

Upcoming shows opening in November can be viewed at The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, and the Traver Gallery in Seattle. If you love glass design the way I do, be sure to take in one of these shows!