ALEXANDER ABAJIAN

Alexander Sarkis Abajian graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000 with a Bachelors Degree in Glass Sculpture. Since then he has exhibited nationwide, Colorado Springs Museum, Colorado Springs, CO; Adam Whitney Gallery, Omaha, NE; Pismo Gallery, Denver, CO; San Francisco Design Center at the A. Rudin Showroom. He has also been a recipient of many awards and scholarships: The General Pilchuck Scholarship, The Martin Foundation Young Craftsmen Award, The Taos Open- Best of Craft Award, to name a few. He was recently a visiting artist at the California College of the Arts. Alexander Abajian is a prolific young artist untethered by convention. He integrates a variety of different elements to his own sculptures. Whether electroplating metal to glass, combining kiln castings with hand blown accents, manipulating solid pieces of color to forge vessels impregnated with intricate designs, or translating his own figurative paintings into three-dimensional sculptures, Alexander manifests an interminable drive to create. He is on the forefront of glass art, truly utilizing the material as a means of expression, free from the constraints of craft.  Alex now lives and works in San Francisco California.

J. LIN-HSIEN KUNG

“I was made in Hong Kong, born in Taiwan, and my parents are from China. I received my BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 for Glass Sculpture after a short stint at Hampshire College studying Latin American Literature and the behavior patterns between wolves and sheep dogs. I left the East Coast heading west after college, in part to heal from an accident that left a few titanium pins and stainless steel plates in my head. I couldn’t smell or taste for three years. I moved from New Mexico to Southern California, then finally Oakland. Glass making has been my passport to seeing the world. I’ve traveled through Japan, China, Taiwan, and most recently Scandinavia. I’ve worked on various projects including custom lighting.”

For the past four or so years, Alex Abajian and Jerry Lin-Hsien Kung have been making “creatures” — tripodal formations of bended glass, typically coated in a mirror finish. In isolation, one of these creatures might appear a merely decorative object — a chic, sensuous addition to a posh lobby or some such space. However, Abajian and Kung have no interest in delivering their creations to such a fate.

To thwart such a banal reading, the duo crowds the creatures in a runway installation, wherein they become a reflective, mercurial melee of limbs and curves, capturing viewers’ reflections and enlivening one another. “They naturally want to go together in certain ways,” said Abajian. “Like one will be pushing and the other will be pulling. They nestle into these groups and you see it looks like a group of people, how people actually congregate.”