Claes Uvesten (b. 1964) started his artistic career as a sculptor but transitioned to glass after a revelation during a trip around the world in his late twenties. While snorkeling at Australia's Great Barrier Reef, he was surrounded by a crystalline beauty that he knew could never be expressed in words. Only in glass.

So he sought out Orrefors Glassworks and became an apprentice at Sweden's most prestigious glassworks. While traditional studio glass is based on unity and perfection, Claes Uvesten wanted to embrace chance and fragmentation. He began experimenting with different ways of casting glass, incorporating foreign objects - such as wire mesh and silver threads - into the molten glass, and started assembling his sculptures from multiple pieces of cast glass. His life-sized glass heads are in dialogue with the ancient marble sculptures he admires so much, but at the same time, they reference science fiction, cyberculture, and contemporary street life.