IMG 6980-001-Stairway 2

Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood, West Sussex.

Danny Lane is renowned for creating large–scale works in glass. His works often engage with their surrounding architecture or, as in this case, define their own. Stairway is a composition of glass and steel that exemplifies Lane’s engineering ingenuity. This work is composed solely of 30, 60 and 90 degree angles that work together to manipulate a specific perspective. Lane crafts this perspective to create a receding stairway that symbolises time, potential, progress and linear and non-linear chronologies.

Lane’s Stairway makes bold references to both art history, particularly Brancusi’s endless column, and the historical symbol of Jacob’s Ladder. This is the symbolic pathway one should follow in order to secure entry into heaven, commonly referred to as a ‘stairway to heaven.’ Without a landing, Stairway seems to stretch on into infinity and, in combination with its luminous surface, enables it as such a pathway. Lane has etched the glass surfaces to refract light, giving the illusion that this work is lightly covered in water and evoking ideas of impasse; that the ‘stairway’ is not always easily navigable.