Chihuly Dips Into Architecture With Mural of Resplendent Glass

THIRTY-two glass pieces by Dale Chihuly have moved into the Grand Lobby of the Brooklyn Museum. ``The Brooklyn Wall'' is a three-dimensional mural of flaring glass forms, which Chihuly calls ``Persians'' because of their exotic splendor. The site-specific installation will be displayed through Sept. 10, 1995.

Buttercup yellow, apricot, and cobalt blue, the yard-wide floral forms appear to undulate across the wall in scattered groupings like clusters of underwater sea anemones. Light seeps through the colored glass from both behind and in front to flood the wall with wavy shadows and expand the composition.

Operating at the nexus of art and craft, abstraction and representation, natural and invented forms, Chihuly has increased the vocabulary of glass in terms of both scale and form. Here he not only explores the sculptural potential of glass, he uses it to create an architectural experience. The elasticity of the individual glass pieces and their rippling arrangement imply movement and rhythm, like the ebb and flow of tides over a coral reef.

Extremely popular with the public, Chihuly's work captures in solid form the viscosity of liquid glass. Looking at his lurid, tropical-sunset colors and activated shapes has the same hypnotic fascination as watching waves tumbling ashore at Coney Island.