Thursday Salute to Originals: Crossing Waters
Layered glass sculptures illustrate tiny human figures traversing massive bodies of water.
New Zealand-based artist Ben Young is well known for creating massive sculptures and dioramas of marine landscapes. In this series, the artist explores aquatic topography in a striking application of glass, concrete, bronze, and steel.
Each scene illustrates an expansive, calm body of water surrounded by natural rock formations and topography. Smooth, aqua-colored glass fills cross-sections of gray concrete, supported by squared stainless steel frames that elevate the form.
Atop each glass pool is a tiny human figurine cast in bronze — each playing, fishing, or canoeing in the expansive cross-section of glass and metal. These tiny figures are meant to symbolically contrast how human activity appears tiny and minuscule beside the majesty of a vast and “larger-than-life” depiction of earth’s oceans and bodies of water.
This Thursday, we’re saluting the marine topography sculpture of Ben Young. You can view more collections like these on the artist’s Instagram.
Sources: Ben Young, This is Colossal