Big, Bold and Hardly Fragile

Savvy sculptor that he is, Howard Ben Tre knows the power of paradox. His seductive cast-glass forms crackle with sensory contradictions. Massive yet precious, sexual yet spiritual, polished yet cracked and pitted, they are currently on view in a tantalizing exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Called “Howard Ben Tre: Interior/Exterior,” this sometimes stunning retrospective includes 30 abstract glass sculptures and 11 related works on paper--all made between the mid-’80s and 1999--plus photographs and models from four public art projects. It remains on view through May 6.

Of course glass is not a medium most of us associate with substance, weight or permanence. Yet there are no fragile glass slippers here.

Ben Tre likes his glass big and bold, cast in factories and displayed in all its teasingly translucent, metallically-embellished, industrial-strength glory. And like the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” his most skillfully conceived and executed pieces play straight to our primal sense of cosmic mystery.

What’s best about Ben Tre is his sense of purity and hope.

His glass fountains in Boston, Providence, R.I., and elsewhere personalize public spaces, humanizing their surroundings and linking strangers in a shared experience.

He finds beauty in community and commonality in art.

A fearless eclectic, he blends the workaday elements of ancient cultures--temple columns, Japanese and Native American vessels and implements--with sacred Hindu symbols of sexuality and glassy forms suggesting the human figure.

He is a master of smooth synthesis.

His three “Wrapped Forms” on view at OCMA were inspired by trips to Asia, where Ben Tre became familiar with the religious practice of wrapping and anointing lingams (Hindu phallic symbols) and temple fragments. These shapes exude a strong sense of male potency. They also conjure bombs or missiles--the deadly flip side of fertility. Each form has its own resonance.

“Wrapped Form I” is a phallic-looking mass spanned by an arc of rougher, blackened glass. Look inside the greenish, semi-opaque surface and you almost literally see stars--a seemingly endless world of flickering, fairy-tale light.

“Double Wrapped Form” is circled near the center by a wide metal band. It looks like some sort of science fiction contrivance--a killer crystal ball, an omniscient computerized brain, a time-defying transport device.

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By comparison, “Fourth Figure” and “Column 19”--both made in the mid-’80s and inspired by the elements of ancient architecture--seem sleek but static.

Their angles and surfaces are alluring nonetheless.

Other, more recent pieces, including “Large Basin,” tease us with whether, quite literally, the glass is half empty or half full. Their open cavities are decidedly female, nestled inside heavy, more masculine geometries.

Ben Tre’s pristine glass benches are a cool, visual pun because they co-opt the fused functionality and spirituality of ancient architecture. They don’t just refer to it, they reprise it.

Yet despite the rich art-historical hommage in his columns and benches, Ben Tre’s wrapped forms and other figural works are ultimately more of a mind-tingle. They feel more palpably alive and yearning. All that is humanly possible seems to sparkle inside “Double Wrapped Form”--inside its limitless glass heart.

SHOW TIMES

“Howard Ben Tre: Interior/Exterior,” Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Tuesdays-Sundays, 11 a.m-5 p.m. $4 to $5; children 15 and younger admitted free. (949) 759-1122. Through May 6.