Sculptor Charisse Pearlina Weston's Work with Shattered Glass.

2 hours ago7 min read

Charisse Pearlina Weston’s trajectory in the art world is not just ascending; it’s a masterclass in narrative construction, where her primary medium—shattered glass—becomes a profound lexicon for exploring Black spatial and historical consciousness. With a pivotal new show at the prestigious Jack Shainman Gallery and a highly anticipated return to Art Basel Miami Beach, 2025 is poised to be a definitive chapter, cementing her status from a rising talent to a central voice in contemporary sculpture.Weston’s work transcends mere materiality; she doesn't just use glass, she converses with its inherent contradictions—its fragility and strength, its transparency and opacity, its ability to both reflect and distort reality. Drawing from a deep well of art historical references, from the fractured planes of Cubism that deconstructed form to the conceptual rigor of Gordon Matta-Clark’s architectural interventions, Weston’s installations are deeply researched meditations.Her series often incorporates text, photographic transfers, and poetic fragments directly onto the glass surfaces, creating layered palimpsests that speak to the fragmentation of memory, particularly within the context of the American South and the ongoing legacy of anti-Black violence. Each shard is meticulously placed, not as a representation of destruction, but as a careful reassembly, a reclamation of space and narrative that has been systematically broken.The glass becomes a metaphor for the Black experience: subjected to immense pressure, it can shatter, but in the hands of an artist like Weston, those fragments are reconstituted into something new, resilient, and breathtakingly beautiful, demanding the viewer to look *through* the breaks, not just at them. Her upcoming presentations are more than just exhibitions; they are critical interventions.At Jack Shainman, known for championing artists who engage with urgent socio-political dialogues, her work will likely be framed within the larger canon of conceptual art, inviting comparisons to the poetic minimalism of Fred Sandback or the material investigations of Zoe Leonard. Meanwhile, her platform at Art Basel Miami Beach, a nexus of global art market forces, places her politically charged aesthetic in direct conversation with commerce, a tension that often fuels the most compelling artistic debates.Critics and curators are taking note, not only of the visceral impact of her installations but of the scholarly rigor underpinning them; her work doesn’t just occupy physical space, it challenges the very architecture of art history itself, insisting on the inclusion of narratives that have been historically sidelined. As the art world continues to grapple with questions of representation and material legacy, Weston’s practice offers a clear, sharp, and indispensable vision—one where brokenness is not an end point, but the very material for building anew.

#Charisse Pearlina Weston

#sculpture

#shattered glass

#Jack Shainman Gallery

#Art Basel Miami Beach

#art exhibition

#contemporary art

#featured

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