The collection features individually created and collaborative works by two artists, Seth Clark and Jason Forck. Original collages mounted to panels play off architectonic sculptures in glass and wood culminating in a cohesive body of work that explores the notion of deteriorating architecture.
Clark and Forck came together through a mutual interest in Americana landscape and the concept of abstraction through decay. They are attracted to the aesthetics of buildings and architectural systems that are dissolving and dissipating. Dissolution describes their work formally in terms of architecture in collapse, but it also describes their collaboration in terms of disassembling ideas and then bringing them back together. Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Dissolution is a result of a one-year, Idea Furnace residency at Pittsburgh Glass Center that pairs glass and non-glass artists for explorations in material, content, and process.
Detailed architectural formations, in various sizes, play a significant role in the cohesive collection, with shingles made from glass and exposed beams and interior bracing lending to the works' authenticity. About the work, Seth Clark comments, “I see an inherent honesty in the face of my subject. Among all of the clutter—the shards of wood and layers of rubble—there remains a gentle resolve. The buildings, often on the brink of ruin, have something very energized and present trying to escape from their fragmented reality.”
