Tear Bottle

Tears haven been a recurring motif in Michael Sailstorfer’s work since 2015, and his TEAR BOTTLE SCULPTURE edition emerged as a further development of this preoccupation. For Sailstorfer, tears represent a moment when the inside of the body suddenly produces something on its exterior, crossing a boundary that is normally maintained between out and in. The artist used the fluidity of the tear as a starting point for this edition, creating delicate glass sculptures that reveal a transparency between their status as containers and their identity as solid objects, formed from the fires of a traditional glassblowing technique. The shape of the sculpture is also reminiscent of the slow, downward movement of tears as they are affected by the force of gravity once they are secreted from the eye. As a collection, the bottles have been featured in exhibitions by the artist, arranged as a group on the floor, but also displayed on drying racks that cite one of the earliest Readymade works by Marcel Duchamp.