As your eyes adjust to this dark gallery take a moment to experience this large work by Bertil Vallien. Passage took 18 months to create and is the largest sculpture ever created at Kosta Boda (as it sounds), the oldest glass factory in Sweden. This installation, as Vallien calls it, tells a story about history and the unknown future. He imagines the ship as an enormous vessel in the sky that is floating over a contemporary landscape.

Encased inside the glass ship are small objects that act as metaphors for life’s journey—including the mummy of an Egyptian girl whose preserved beauty quickly disappeared after her sarcophagus was opened. On the top is a large head with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. This is the captain of the ship, Janus, a Greek god with the ability to observe the future and look back to the past. Janus is guarded by two rows of glass silhouettes that represent the shadows of souls. At the back of the ship, Vallien added a pendulum made out of a rock that measures time, keeps direction, and acts as a command center and at the front, the glass is clear indicating an unknown future.

In the wrought iron landscape below the boat he includes numerous small elements with enigmatic meanings. Beneath the ship’s center a human shaped opening unfolds to expose an underground space where he stored small glass objects. As you walk around the piece notice the two mirrored ends that give the illusion of infinity and reflect your participation in Vallien’s mystical world.

Bertil Vallien, Swedish, born 1938; Passage, 2017; Mixed media, 75 ¼ x 120 ¼ x 29 in.; Courtesy of the Isabel Foundation, L2018.1