Through a Glass Lightly

Fresnel lenses, developed by physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel in the 18th century, were a boon to lighthouses because their concentric ridges allowed light to be transmitted greater distances.

Today, Fresnel lenses come in handy plastic sheets that people use for magnifying text. Larger models are available, but if Google is anything to go by, people seem to use them primarily for their destructive power. Big Fresnel lenses can focus the power of the sun and do cool things like melt asphalt.

Alyson Shotz and a team of assistants hand-cut 18,000 plastic Fresnel lenses into ovals of varying sizes for The Shape of Space, her installation at Rice Gallery. It was the fourth installation in the gallery’s Summer Window series that presents window-oriented works during the summer months when the exhibition space is closed.

I don’t think Shotz has destroyed any parking lots, but she has a history of playing with light, reflection, and perceptions. In a 1997 performance piece, Untitled (Reflective Mimicry), Shotz used mirrors to cover a body suit. She attached other mirrors to wires that extended out and away from her body. The mirrors fractured her figure in space, visually intermingling it with its surroundings.

She induced a similar phenomenon in 2003 with Mirror Fence. In the 138-foot-long outdoor installation, she subverted the stereotypical white picket fence by covering the pickets with mirroring Plexiglas. The fence was visible when viewed at an oblique angle or from a distance, but as you moved closer, it became an almost invisible barrier that distorted space, optically merging the pickets and the grass.

For the Rice Gallery project, Shotz’s thousands of painstakingly cut ovals were stapled together to create a massive curtain more than 40 feet wide and 14 feet high. The labor-intensive, iridescent spectacle hung behind the windowed wall of Rice Gallery in baroquely undulating curves that moved ever so slightly in response to the gallery’s air-conditioning system. The plastic Fresnel ovals would glitter, glisten, and gleam, calling to mind an effervescing wall of bubbles or a skin of scales removed from some massive specimen. The effect was spectacular. Up close, the distorted interior of the gallery could be seen in the thousands of small ovals, causing an optical illusion to kick in as the far wall seemed to leap forward, right up to your retinas. It was like a 3-D movie except 3-D movies usually have something creepy and scary like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Shotz’s 3-D was pretty and sparkly and fantastic, and you wanted to reach out and touch it, unlike the Creature.

The Shape of Space is a particularly apt title for Shotz’s project. The curtain and its transparent material didn’t really feel like an object; it was an optical phenomenon that activated the gallery and changed perceptions of its space.

Looking at Shotz’s piece made you want to dive into it and experience what it would be like to be surrounded by it. The artist wonders the same thing and continues to work with Fresnel’s innovation, exploring different ways to use the lenses in other environments.
Shotz works in a range of media, including painting that uses layers of resin over vividly colored, organically abstract images that are collaged as well as painted in oil, gouache, and ink. There is a mandala-like centrality to her compositions that is reminiscent of multicolored Rorschach blots, and the different layers of resin lend their own optical aspect to the work.

Shotz has a great talent for straightforward, seemingly uncomplicated ideas that become striking visual experiences, transforming her materials into works that resonate far beyond their origins. It is work that rewards its viewers, conjuring strong responses and providing stunning visuals that dazzle and make us question how and what we see.

—Kelly Klaasmeyer