Amy Thai: The 'Undercurrent' Glass and Marble Series, 2023-2024

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The title 'Undercurrent' takes its definition from water – a current moving beneath the surface, in a different direction from any surface current.

Bringing marble blocks from Carrara, the Tuscan quarrying town whose stone has been prized by sculptors for centuries, to a 2023 residency in Venice, Thai found in the city's water the conceptual terms for a new body of work. The weight of the stone against the lightness of the surrounding lagoon established its central tension.

Continuing the cycle in glass, Thai collaborated with Galleria Barovier&Toso in Murano, the Venetian island that has been synonymous with glassmaking since the thirteenth century, pushing the scale at which the medium can be handled, producing large-scale pieces that are elemental in form and capture light within their mass.

Thai works across materials, directly with their inherent character – the weight of marble, the translucency of glass – allowing the natural properties of each to guide her forms, emerging from the organic world.

 

Marble

AT005: Amy Thai, Undercurrent V, Marble Series, 2024

This sculpture stands apart in the ‘Undercurrent’ series through its material history. Thai discovered an abandoned marble block that had lain in the ground, its edges still bearing traces of that burial. Working this salvaged stone, she carved a massive floral form in the round – meant to be seen from all sides, with no single front or back. The rough, weathered edges contrast with the carved interior surfaces, preserving the stone’s life before the artist’s intervention. Mounted to allow rotation, the work brings together Thai’s themes of weight and movement in a piece where the marble’s own past becomes part of the sculpture’s narrative. The heavy form, despite its mass, suggests organic growth and transformation.