$350,000 glass antiprism sculptures go on sale at Dubai Design Week

The four structures by Shuster + Moseley are priced at between $80,000 and $110,000 each, or they can be bought as a set

Antiprism sculptures by Shuster + Moseley on the opening day of Dubai Design Week 2021. All photos: Pawan Singh / The National

The structures are priced at between $80,000 and $110,000 each, including bases, or can be bought as a set for $350,000

They are created in collaboration with Dubai studio Espace

Each unique form is carefully constructed from clear optical glass panes

The structures were hand-bonded in the UAE

Working with optics, geometry, light and glass, British artists Claudia Moseley and Edward Shuster create sculptural installations and immersive environments that reflect on the nature of consciousness and technology.

Their creations are meant to be “meditative instruments” that act as an interface between the viewer and their environment. For Horizon of Day and Night, the duo erected prismic glass monoliths, up to two metres in height, within AlUla, home to Saudi Arabia’s first Unesco World Heritage Site.

Existing as pillars of light that create a clockwork of optical projections, the structures point to the rising and setting of the sun at the current time and during the winter and summer solstices, as well as the south and north Polaris stars and the setting of Venus.

A piece by the pair also went on show as part of Forever Is Now, a historic exhibition at the Pyramids of Giza. Titled (Plan of the Path of Light) In the House of Hidden Places, the creation consisted of a display of glass panels that framed the Pyramids in the background, as a way to link “the experience of the present to both the ancient world and our future technological landscape”, the artists explain.

For Dubai Design Week, which runs until Saturday, Shuster and Moseley created four of their signature large-scale glass antiprisms, in varying sizes. The forms, the pair say, are designed to “reveal the shape of light, showing how consciousness can be opened towards deeper dimensions of luminosity”.

Created in collaboration with Dubai studio Espace, each unique form is carefully constructed from clear optical glass panes and hand-bonded in the UAE. In situ in Dubai Design District, they reflect and refract a unique optical fingerprint of their surroundings. Entitled Resting, Empty, the works are suggestive of boulders in the landscape, like future relics of our technologically driven age.

The sculptural series is also a nod to the predominance of glass in the region’s architectural structures, and employs the precision techniques and technologies that allow for the complex bevelling and bonding of thick pieces of glass, usually preserved for the creation of glazing and high-tech facades. The structures are priced at between $80,000 and $110,000 each, including bases, or can be bought as a set for $350,000.