Judith Schaechter’s “The Life Ecstatic” at the Claire Oliver Gallery

In Judith Schaechter’s new body of work, The Life Ecstatic, the artist explores transcendent joy. Is there the possibility of a moment of true synchronicity with one’s surroundings and nature? Ecstasy can mean an emotional or religious frenzy or a trancelike state; one’s subjective perception of time, space or self may change or completely disappear.

Schaechter deliberately chooses images that are ambiguous enough to handle multiple viewer interpretations. Interested in the paradoxes of image-making and the tension between illusion and truth, the artist examines the notion that we can never gain the proper perspective necessary to gauge our current “reality” without completely disassociating ourselves through time or space. We can look to representations, i.e. works of art, to temporarily resolve this dilemma.

For Schaechter it is clear that concept cannot be separated from process and material. Although glass is a material often associated with transparency and luminosity, the artist deals with these aspects of the material in a new way, laying layer upon layer of colored glass one over the next to create new colors, depth and texture. Much as a painter mixes pigments on a palette, Schaechter stretches the capabilities of her material beyond what is typically expected from it. As beautiful and provocative as her stained glass panels are at first sight, when one is seduced to linger over them we gain insight and depth of meaning cleverly housed in traditional beauty.