Dale Chihuly breathes life into glass, in more ways than one. Miles away from the rarefied vessels that once typified this medium, his jaw-dropping new installations at L.A. Louver dramatically alter their surrounding environment, taking shape in your imagination as much as they do in the glass-blowing process.
Over the years, Chihuly, who co-founded the internationally renowned Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle, has pushed glass to ever greater heights, incorporating lavish color, rich art-history allusions, architectural savvy and a sense of playfulness coupled with a "What'll he think of next?" audacity.
After a 1976 auto injury damaged his depth perception, Chihuly was unable to blow glass himself. At that point, he began assembling large teams of assistants to realize his designs, which grew increasingly ambitious and complex as Chihuly's interests gravitated toward larger, site-specific projects.
Chihuly's new works evoke natural life forms. A rounded hallway leading into the main gallery houses the magnificent "Pergola Ceiling Installation," different versions of which have been previously exhibited elsewhere. In this dazzling environment, hundreds of multicolored vessels rest atop a clear glass ceiling like so many scattered jewels. These sparkling objects refract the sunlight shining from an upper window, splashing dappled pools of colored light onto the floor and the surrounding white walls. The effect is of walking through a life-sized kaleidoscope or a luminous underwater cavern.
The gallery's beach-side location makes it hard not to think of these unidentified forms as squids, stingrays, octopuses, jellyfish, conchs and other sea creatures. Similarly, the four breathtaking works in the main gallery (a fifth is included in the upper sky-room) seem connected to the sea. Your eye is immediately drawn to a fiery red creature with grasping, Medusa-like tentacles measuring 13 1/2 feet tall by 12 1/2 feet wide. Appearing to pulsate with an inner life, it has a gorgeous, vaguely threatening presence recalling that of a giant squid or a burning sun.
Equally stunning are the blue-hued, curved platters of Chihuly's "Persian Wall Installation," whose ridged textures, radiating patterns and gentle curves recall lily pads, sand dollars, blooming flowers or fluttering butterflies clinging to a wall. An adjacent gallery contains four unabashedly sensual, milky-red vessels from Chihuly's "Red Baskets" series, three of which bear small ovoid bubbles within their womb-like interiors. Deeply mysterious, these fecund works anticipate the germination of still newer forms, which Chihuly will no doubt continue to deliver.
