This work comprises a table set with sixty-two apothecary-like jars stopped with glass spheres, a form inspired by traditional glassware in Monterrey, Mexico, where Tears was produced. The jars contain a kaleidoscopic assortment of colorful glass suns, stars, hooks, rings, and beads floating in water. Arranged like votive offerings, the jars resemble lachrymatories, bottles that ancient Roman mourners filled with their tears and placed in burial tombs, or “Passion bottles,” which contain floating glass representations of the instruments of Christ’s Passion.

Are the small elements in these jars individual tears, mythically transformed into jewels, or are the glass jars themselves the tears, a collection of moods preserved or yet to be expressed? As multivalent symbols and catalysts in countless myths and religions, and as traces of both the physical and emotional realm, tears are a potent reference for Othoniel.

This work is part of a recent series of “knot” sculptures in which irregular glass beads have been replaced with mirrored glass, a handmade appearance giving way to a smooth, industrial finish resembling polished steel. The minimalism of these perfect spheres contrasts with the intricacy of the overall three-dimensional shape. Continuous, closed loops inscribed in space bring to mind abstracted mathematical equations and molecular structures, or perhaps the convoluted tracery and arabesques of Islamic art. Knots organize themselves around an axis and define a central void, and in these suspended works, as in his necklaces and mandorlas, Othoniel explores a form that implies the body and its absence.

The title of the work refers to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s use of the Borromean knot (an image found on the Renaissance Borromeo family’s coat of arms) to explain the interrelationship of the real, symbolic, and imaginary in his theory of human subjectivity. It is a group of three rings linked so that if any one of them is severed, all three become separated.

This work is based on a dreamlike procession through a timeless world of marvelous objects that the viewer is invited to interpret and appropriate into his or her own personal narrative. My Bed is fit for fairy-tale royalty and brimming with sensual promise, with its confectionary pink felt cover dotted with nipplelike flowers and bordered with silk tassels, a vibrant glass bead frame, and an armature of lacy aluminum rings.