HELEN PASHGIAN: WHERE GLASS, LIGHT AND SPACE PLAY PEEK-A-BOOK
- Kaja Knowers
- Aug 11
- 2 min read
Opening Spark
Helen Pashgian is the unsung light alchemist of the Light and Space movement. Armed not with brush or chisel but epoxy, resin, plastic and sometimes glass, she conjures objects that feel alive, patient, and devastatingly elegant. Think of her as the whisperer of installation art that does not scream. It glows, it milestones our gaze, and it teases perception.
Her Materials: Glass, Resin and That Luminous ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’
Pashgian often uses industrial materials including cast resin, acrylic, and glass to create forms that hover between hard object and ethereal presence. These sculptures rely on how light moves through, reflects off, or hides within their surfaces, turning materiality into mood and perception into the medium.
Signature Works Illuminated
1. Untitled, 2012–13 (Light Invisible at LACMA)
A constellation of twelve towering acrylic columns that fill a dark gallery with soft, internal luminosity. You approach them; the forms hover, shift, morph. Pashgian says they are “presences in space” that do not give themselves away immediately. They demand motion and curiosity.
2. Spheres and Lenses (2021)
In Lehmann Maupin’s Spheres and Lenses show, Pashgian presents translucent orbs and cast epoxy lenses whose coloured cores bloom and fade depending on your vantage point and ambient light. These are tactile odes to glass, even when resin or acrylic, to memory and reflection.
3. Disc and Sphere Works
From early to mid career, Pashgian has created spheres and discs, rich in colour and satin smooth in polish, so they distort their surroundings and invite contemplation. As light enters, distortions, illusions and rainbows occur. They are little worlds, glass adjacent planets that orbit your gaze.
Why She Matters to My Practice
Material Meets Metaphor: Just as you bend glass, light, and technology into playful, vulnerable sculptures, Pashgian bends resin and acrylic to blur visibility and invisibility, opacity and revelation
Installation as Experience: Her works are not just objects. They are environments. They react to light and your movement, speaking your language of immersive, multi sensory art
Subtle Surprise: Her sculptures do not grandstand. They unfold. You circle them, and they reveal new colours. That is cheeky, intimate art and it echoes your desire to amaze through minimal gesture and honest material play.
Final Reflection
Long before LED addressable lights danced in glass, Pashgian was bending light from within resin and glass-like forms, crafting installation works that make light feel sculptural and space feel poetic. Her legacy reminds us that transformation, minimalism, and material integrity are not opposites of play. They are the wings under it.
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