Tina Turner 1971

Christopher Wilmarth made this sculpture, ‘Tina Turner’, from glass, but without a date. It's all about transparency and surface, but also about form and structure. The glass has a delicate, almost ethereal quality, but it's also solid and weighty. Look at the way Wilmarth plays with light and shadow, creating a sense of depth and movement, but the etched lines disrupt our gaze, drawing attention back to the surface. The curved glass creates a contrast with the flat, rectangular panes, and the way the glass is stacked on the left hints at a kind of architectural construction. Wilmarth was clearly influenced by the minimalist sculptors, but he brings a painterly sensibility to his work, using the glass as a canvas for his explorations of form and light. Think of Robert Irwin's use of light, or Dorothea Rockburne's use of geometric form, to see how artists have explored the interplay of line, light, and surface.