Dane Mitchell

Initial Fulgurites, 2014 is the first group of objects that evolved into Dane Mitchell's vast floor-based work titled Sketches of Meteorological Phenomena.

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The complete installation comprises over 4,000 individual glass forms and is held in the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art (IAC) in Lyon, France.

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These works are central to Mitchell's ongoing investigation of phenomena existing at the edges of visibility and knowledge. They reflect his continuing interest in the blurred boundaries between natural and artificial through the reimagining of naturally formed objects called fulgurites.

 

From Latin fulgur, meaning thunderbolt, fulgurites are created instantaneously when lightning strikes sand or particular soils to form glass tentacle-like objects. These unexpected forms freeze a temporal moment and give it solid form.

Through suggested forces and experimental demonstrability, Initial Fulgurites explores a form of 'plastic invisibility,' investigating territories of transformation between different states of energy-matter and seeking to frame and invoke material and sensory qualities that are unstable, dynamic, durational and tender.

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Glass inhabits a territory that embodies this logic: glass is a shape-shifting material, simultaneously ancient and modern, liquid and solid or some alchemical in-between. In this instance, its liquid form was used to 'draw' fulgurites on and in undulating sand by pouring hot molten glass directly on it.

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For the artist, these glass forms began as an attempt to render weather concrete, yet en masse they become many images: of frozen water; root systems pulled from the ground; rain-made-concrete; bodily fluids-made-fruitless.