Medusa

In 1990, Thomas Glassford relocated from Austin to Mexico City, working alongside a cadre of both Mexican and expatriate artists. There, he began to repurpose everyday objects to create evocative sculptures and installations that alternately transform the quotidian into the eerie or the sublime. Medusa’s otherworldly gourd “head,” with spindly industrial hoses representing serpentine “hair” that cascades downward, is a strange, jarring juxtaposition of organic and man-made materials. In mythology, Medusa’s gaze turns onlookers into stone. Gazing at this eerily faceless head, suspended at eye level, one instead thinks of Glassford’s ingenuity in infusing the uncanny into the everyday with minimal artistic intervention. Whereas the mythological Medusa represents danger, Glassford’s contemporary take on this ancient legend is as ingenious as it is visually haunting.