Trefoil Looking Glass
In collaboration with Anna Riley
Group exhibition, The Third, Meaning: ESTAR(SER) Installs the Frye Collection, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
October 15, 2022–October 15, 2023
Permanent Collection of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Trefoil Looking Glass is a handmade lens by Justin Ginsberg and Anna Riley: three solid glass spheres fused into a single transparent form. Made for The Third, Meaning: ESTAR(SER) Installs the Frye Collection (2022–23) at the Frye Art Museum, it was mounted on a stand facing Julius Scheuerer’s Peacock (1907), which hung upside down on the gallery wall. Each sphere inverts what it sees, so visitors looking through the lens found the painting split into three views, each restored to its upright position. The exhibition catalog presented the lens as a para-fictional artifact from the “Frye Trunk,” and the work was later acquired for the museum’s permanent collection.
Trefoil Looking Glass
6" x 6" x 3" (15.2 x 15.2 x 7.6 cm)
Solid glass lenses, fused
2022
Justin Ginsberg and Anna Riley
Collection of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle
Installation view, Frye Art Museum, 2022.
Each sphere holds its own upside-down view of the gallery.
Julius Scheuerer (German, 1859–1913)
Peacock, 1907
Oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 24 1/2 in.
Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection, 1952.148
Image courtesy Frye Art Museum
Julius Scheuerer, Peacock, 1907: hung upside down so the Trefoil Looking Glass returns it upright.
Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection.
More on this work and Exhibition:
Exhibition catalog entry: Frye Art Museum: THE THIRD, MEANING: ESTAR(SER) Installs the Frye Collection (PDF) →
Exhibition Brochure: Frye Art Museum: THE THIRD, MEANING: ESTAR(SER) Installs the Frye Collection →
Frye Art Museum: THE THIRD, MEANING: ESTAR(SER) Installs the Frye Collection →