Dylan Martinez — H20/sio2 Water Bags For Sale

Dylan Martinez makes glass sculptures of plastic bags filled with water. The bags are tied at the top, slightly misshapen from the weight of the water inside, and completely convincing. They are made entirely from hot-sculpted, sandblasted, and acid-etched glass, and they look nothing like it.

The work is built around a simple premise: glass and water share enough visual properties that, handled correctly, one can pass for the other. Martinez has spent years refining exactly how to do that. The surfaces on these pieces replicate the transparency of plastic, the stillness of water, and the way light moves through both. The series also includes Bubble Fish 15, a water bag with a skeleton fish suspended inside it. It extends the concept of the water bag beyond the container itself and introduces something that was once living into the illusion. It is among the more unusual works in his catalog.