Fred Wilson, Iago's Mirror, 2009. Murano glass. H 80, W 48 3/4, D 10 1/2 in.
Just unveiled at the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion is a recent purchase of a 2009 work by Fred Wilson entitled Iago’s Mirror. It has been installed adjacent to a Karen LaMonte frosted glass Dress Impression with Train (2005), a chromatic and weighty counterpoint to the translucent and ethereal work.
“Fred Wilson is an important artist whose work crosses boundaries between the glass world and contemporary art,” said TMA Director Brian Kennedy. “One of the museum’s goals is to acquire works of art of singular merit by distinguished living artists. Iago’s Mirror is a perfect fit within our comprehensive glass collection.”
Conceptual artist Wilson, born in 1954 in New York City, graduated with a BFA from SUNY/Purchase. His work, which often takes on issues of race in highly metaphoric installations that frequently employ glass, is represented by The Pace Gallery.
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Wilson began working in glass in 2001 during a residency at the Pilchuck Glass School. It is a medium well-suited to his explorations of ideas of beauty. In 2009 he worked with Berengo Studios in Venice to develop a process for layering mirrors together while preserving the intricate details of a traditional 18th-century Murano mirror. According to a Toledo Museum of Art release: “To create the dark reflection cast by Iago’s Mirror, the back side is colored black rather than silver. Black glass is the most difficult to create and always has a colored hue, here a deep purple.”
“Iago’s Mirror ties in beautifully with the Museum’s glass collection,” said Jutta Page, the TMA’s curator of glass and decorative arts. “Glass mirrors are an important aspect of luxury glass production since the Renaissance, and Venetian mirrors especially—which had to be imported and were precarious to ship due to their size—were and still are the epitome of such luxury home furnishings.”