Kirsten Glass creates from and for the imagination. In Alchemical Vessels her canvases layer abstract texture and process over figurative forms lifted from books of early erotic photography, those antique nudes evoking nostalgia even as a primordial charge carries into the present. The primordial is what raises the heart rate. Beneath her Botticelli-soft bodies an oily field of meat churns, the alchemist’s prima materia rendered as paint, and that is the surprise hidden inside the contemplative work her name tends to summon: a surprise that meets the viewer now, not through the lens of the past.
Exhibition Notes: Kirsten Glass, Alchemical Vessel
The Union Club is excited to present Alchemical Vessels, a solo exhibition of new paintings and collages by Kirsten Glass, on view until Friday 17 July 2026.
Bringing together a series of materially rich and sensually charged works, Alchemical Vessels positions both image and surface as sites of transformation. Glass’s paintings evolve through a responsive dialogue between chance and intention, inviting moments of pareidolia in which forms emerge and dissolve within layered abstraction.
Working through an intuitive and immersive process, Glass describes her approach as akin to “a girl playing with dolls – daydreams, fantasies, memories made materially real”.
Central to the exhibition are figures sourced from books on early erotic photography, which are cut and pasted into collages or drawn directly onto the canvas. These nudes, whose naturally various, often fleshy, and somehow innocently posed bodies contrast starkly with contemporary, digitalised images of the female form.
“Handling the paint and the little 19th-century cut-outs is fascinating to me; I imagine what their fantasies are. When I arrange them within the paintings they seem to be thinking of each other”.
She describes her painting process as a more mercurial journey, one that reflects her engagement with premodern cosmology. As Glass notes, “for me, abstract painting belongs to Mercury as much as to Venus”.
In Alchemical Vessels 2 (pictured above), the canvas is jarringly divided horizontally, separating two distinct zones of activity. The upper register houses delicately rendered, Sandro Botticelli-like nudes, whose softness and poise evoke a sense of suspended intimacy. Beneath them, a meaty layer of oil paint unfolds into a semi-illusory field of rhythmic bands, charged with movement and intensity. “Here, I feel that Saturn’s structuring nature unites with the sensuality of Venus and the Mercurial trickster.”
Alongside the nudes a cast of other characters appear: the moon, roses, alchemical birds such as peacocks and swans, an AI-generated sleeping child, a faint drawing of Rodin’s The Kiss, and a scene from the Eight of Cups tarot card. These elements contribute to a shifting symbolic language that moves between the personal, historical, and archetypal.
Underlying the work is Glass’s ongoing engagement with the concept of prima materia, an elusive foundational substance central to alchemical transformation. Within her practice, this idea becomes a way of understanding how images, materials, and meanings remain in flux, forming and reforming. “Maybe it’s simply the style of fantasy that’s transmitted by our mainstream culture,” she reflects, “but in employing premodern thinking, where for example the force of Mars is calmed by the qualities of Venus, I find myself in a richer, more compelling space.”
BIOGRAPHY
Kirsten Glass (b. 1975 Belfast) holds a BA from Chelsea College of Arts, London (1996), and an MA from Goldsmiths, University of London (2000). Solo shows include Youthinkyoufuckinslick, Alfred Camp, London (1999); Ace Gallery, Los Angeles (1999); Habitat, London (2000); Windmills of your Mind, One in the Other, London (2004); Hales Gallery, London (2006); The Body in the Library, V22 Ashwin Street, London (2007); A Spritz of Absinthe, Xero, Kline & Coma, London (2012); Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, HIX ART, London (2015); Swimming Witches (2020), Night Scented Stock (2022), Karsten Schubert, London; Fun For Me, Tom Rowland (2024).
Select group exhibitions include Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys on the Life of the People, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London (2001); Beck’s Futures, ICA, London (2002); and Electric Dreams, Barbican Curve, London (2002). She has taught as a visiting artist at the Slade School of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, Chelsea College of Arts, and is a course mentor for Turps Art School.
Exhibition closes Friday 17 July 2026
The Union Club
49-50 Greek St, London, W1D 4EQ
T+44 020 7437 4002
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
