ARTIFICIAL BEAUTIES

Borosilicate glass, a heat-resistant, chemically stable material that barely expands under temperature shock, is usually found in function-focused settings: like in science labs, with those thin-necked, translucent test tubes and beakers; in kitchens, as measuring cups or old-school Pyrex dishes; and across other technical apparatuses, from telescope mirrors to halogen lamp covers. Rome-born, Milan-based artist, set-, and object-designer Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi transforms this utilitarian material into transfixing forms that resemble frozen liquid — an in-between state that echoes glass’s peculiar structure: atoms fixed rigidly like a solid, yet arranged in the loose, irregular pattern of a fluid. Glass — whether borosilicate or crystal — is just one material in Sgroi’s palette. She has also worked with ceramics, printed silk, jacquard textiles, laminates, and carved Carrara marble, to name but a few. Yet she keeps returning to borosilicate for the uncanny sensation it produces: the experience of watching something, or someone, through it — the inside looking out, or the outside looking in. That slight remove creates a space for projection — a territory where the ordinary starts to pass over into the subconscious. Working with artisans in Paderno Dugnano or glassblowers in the Czech Republic — purposefully outside the long shadow of Murano — Sgroi’s otherworldly works draw at times on ecclesiastical dress and ceremonial objects, as in the rounded, bell-like double chalice of Fasciated I (2023), whose form recalls the voluminous silhouettes of historical Italian nun habits. Elsewhere, her sinuous glassware channels the cinematic worlds she turns to for inspiration, whether the fantastical Technicolor dreamscapes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger or the exaggerated universes of Cronenberg or Burton. No matter the references, glassmaking is an inherently mystical process: a solid form coaxed from molten sand in a matter of seconds. In Bela Borsodi’s photographs, where dry ice coils through the chalices like stage smoke, the objects take on the aura of ritual props. The effect is deliberately artificial, capturing a sense of beauty not found in nature, but one that’s carefully constructed and performed. By pushing craft toward theater rather than the earthy language prized in much of the contemporary Zeitgeist, Sgroi inverts the field’s current attraction to rustic materiality in favor of a certain supernatural stylization. In this series of photographs, taken from Cameranesi Sgroi’s forthcoming monograph, the artist’s tulip-shaped vessels seem suspended in transformation — as if the glass had only just cooled enough to hold its shape, or might liquefy again at any moment.