Black Cube

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Object Name: 
Sculpture
Title: 
Black Cube
Accession Number: 
2000.3.63
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 103.5 cm, W: 102.6 cm, D: 102.4 cm
Location: 
Not on Display
Date: 
2000
Credit Line: 
Gift of the artist and the Heller Gallery, NY
Web Description: 
Black Cube is so dark and reflective that it is almost invisible. It appears to lack substance, like a shadow. Yet its slightly bulging sides reveal an energy contained within. This sculpture is abstract: rather than telling a story, it represents an idea. In Karel’s drawing of Black Cube, which you see here, the energy inside the sculpture is created by spheres and squares that act like an internal dynamo. This theoretical energy source pushes the walls of the cube outward, creating the bulging sides and the distortion of the reflective surface. Karel uses light, glass, and geometric forms to make illusionistic sculptures that challenge the viewer’s perceptions of space and dimension.
Provenance: 
Heller Gallery, Source
2000-12-05
Karel, Marian (Czech, b. 1944), Source
2000-12-05
Technique: 
Inscription: 
MARIAN KAREL 2000
signature
top corner of one face upside-down, block letters
Primary Description: 
Opaque black glass, wood, carpet pad (?), silicone (?); Vitrolite sheet glass, slumped, cut, polished, assembled; wood base. Square shape with slightly bulging sides. Five sides are glass and base is wood with wood and carpet pad.
Venue(s)
Corning Museum of Glass
Sculpture Gallery
Karel Black Cube (family) (2011)BIB# 134427
Karel Black Cube (adult) (2011)BIB# 134426
Contemporary Glass Sculptures and Panels: Selections from the Corning Museum of Glass (2008) illustrated, p. 44, 182-183 (fig. 89, plate 67); BIB# 107478
Sculpture, Glass, and American Museums (2005) illustrated, p. 64; BIB# 88835
Recent Important Acquisitions, 43 (2001) illustrated, p. 224, fig. 63; BIB# AI53002