Feast your eyes on ribs of glass

Do yourself a favor. Visit Material Matters, the glass gallery at 501 Spadina just north of Queen. Perhaps you already walk past to revel in the rotation of glass beauties, ethereal sculptural creatures in a larger than life aquarium-esque storefront. But if you haven't you truly must, especially right now for Ione Thorkelsson's exhibit Ossuary 501.



The exhibit is a series of varying skeletal torsos, some of them with appendaged angelic wings, others verging on darker gothic, perhaps gargyle-ish shapes. The rib cage and spinal reconstuctions are quite breathtaking. Taking the delicacy of glass to emulate the grotesque fragility of what holds the body together Thorkelsson's pieces evoke awe at the sculptures themselves, but also at our own internal structure which seems to stare back at us, like strangely beautiful fragile armor.