Karina Kalantajevska
she/her
2002
@kkalantajevska
Thesis: Neon Border
Where is the line between adaptation and the loss of self?
Molten glass is blown into and through cut metal frameworks, cages and cracks that fight to contain it. The metal grips. The glass pushes back. In some areas, the glass has been forced into the geometry of the frame, its shape a direct imprint of the pressure applied to it. In others, it has burst through a gap and expanded outward, raw and irregular. The sculptures are a record of that struggle, caught in the moment in which neither side has surrendered.
At the core of each form sits a warm light source that bleeds out through the escaping glass into the surrounding air. The amber glow perceived by the eye in physically empty spaces is called the Neon Colour Spreading Effect. The brain, unable to tolerate an unresolved border, generates a colour where none exists, like hope.
Adaptation is a negotiation under pressure. The self does not dissolve quietly into the mould. It finds the crack, and it leaks through.
