Melli Ink: Natural Worlds Made of Glass

The Austrian artist Melli Ink (b. Innsbruck, 1972; lives and works in Zurich and Berlin) creates vitreous worlds that blend beauty and cruelty, dread and fragility in a seductive fusion. The works are based on extensive series of drawings and executed in close collaboration with glassblowers, whose traditional techniques Melli Ink reinterprets for contemporary art. They feature references to art history as well as film, music, and themes from folklore, distant echoes of the artist’s Tyrolean roots. In earlier groups of works, Ink, who studied stage design at the Central Saint Martins College of ARt, London, closely examined Albrecht Durer’s Horsemen of the Apocalypse or Erns Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. In recent years, she has also analyzed and interpreted the imaginaries of Hieronymus Bosch and Joan Miro. This monograph is the first to offer comprehensive insight into the highly expressive visual universe of Melli Ink’s art. It also illustrates her playful engagement with various genres, including sculpture and installation art as well as drawing and performance. With an esasy by Christoph Doswald, a conversation between Thomas Kiesewetter and the artist, and a preface by Uta Grosenick.