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Josiah McElheny

American sculptor From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Josiah McElheny (1966, Boston) is an artist and sculptor, primarily known for his work with glass blowing and assemblages of glass and mirrored glassed objects (see Glass art). He is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program. He lives and works in New York City.

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Early life and education

McElheny grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts.[citation needed] McElheny went on to receive his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988.[2] As part of that program, he trained under master glassblower Ronald Wilkins.[3] After graduating, he was an apprentice to master glassblowers Jan-Erik Ritzman, Sven-Ake Caarlson and Lino Tagliapietra.[1]

Career

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In earlier works McElheny played with notions of history and fiction.[4] Examples of this are works that recreate Renaissance glass objects pictured in Renaissance paintings[5] and modern (but lost) glass objects from documentary photographs (such as works by Adolf Loos).[6] He draws from a range of disciplines like architecture, physics, and literature, among others, and he works in a variety of media.[7]

McElheny has mentioned the influence of the writings of Jorge Luis Borges in his work.[8] His work has also been influenced by the work of the American abstract artist Donald Judd.[9]

McElheny has also expressed interest in glassblowing as part of an oral tradition handed down generation to generation.[citation needed] He has used the infinity mirror visual effect in his explorations of apparently infinite space. His work also sometimes deals with issues of museological displays.[10]

One of the artist's ongoing projects is "An End to Modernity" (2005), commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. The piece is a twelve-foot-wide by ten-foot-high chandelier of chrome and transparent glass modeled on the 1960s Lobmeyr design for the chandeliers found in Lincoln Center, and evoking as well the Big Bang theory.[11] "The End of the Dark Ages," again inspired by the Metropolitan Opera House chandeliers and informed by logarithmic equations devised by the cosmologist David H. Weinberg[12] was shown in New York City in 2008. Later that year, the series culminated in a massive installation titled "Island Universe" at White Cube in London[13] and in Madrid.[14] In 2019 the installation was exhibited at Stanford University's Cantor Center for the Arts.[15]

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Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 1990 – Jägarens Glasmuseet (The Hunter's Glass Museum), Arnescruv, Sweden,
  • 1993 – originals, fakes, reproductions, William Traver Gallery, Seattle
  • 1994 – Authentic History, Robert Lehman Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
  • 1995 – Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
  • 1995 – Installation with Ancient Roman Glass, Ancient Mediterranean and Egypt Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle,
  • 1995 – Donald Young Gallery, Seattle
  • 1996 – Barbara Kraków Gallery, Boston
  • 1997 -Non-Decorative Beautiful Objects, AC Project Room, New York
  • 1997 – Three Alter Egos, Donald Young Gallery, Seattle
  • 1999 – The Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle[16]
  • 1999 – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
  • 2000 – Christian Dior, Jorges Luis Borges, Adolf Loos, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago and Brent Sikkema, New York
  • 2001 – Metal Party, Public Art Fund, New York
  • 2001 – Metal Party, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
  • 2001 – Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas
  • 2002 – Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
  • 2003 – Theories About Reflection, Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York
  • 2003 – Antipodes: Josiah McElheny, White Cube, London[17]
  • 2004 – Total Reflective Abstraction, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago[18]
  • 2005 – An End to Modernity, Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio[12]
  • 2006 – Modernity 1929–1965, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
  • 2006 – Cosmology, Design, and Landscape, Part I, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
  • 2007 – Cosmology, Design, and Landscape, Part II, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
  • 2007 – Projects 84: The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown, The Museum of Modern Art, New York[19]
  • 2007 – The 1st at Moderna: The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown, Moderna Museet, Stockholm[20]
  • 2008 – The Last Scattering Surface, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle and Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minnesota
  • 2008 – Das Lichtklub von Batavia/The Light Club of Batavia, Institut im Glaspavillon, Berlin
  • 2008 – The Light Club of Batavia, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
  • 2008 – The End of the Dark Ages, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
  • 2008 – Island Universe, White Cube, London
  • 2009 – A Space for an Island Universe, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid[21]
  • 2009 – Proposal for a Chromatic Modernism, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
  • 2012 – Some Pictures of the Infinite, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston[11][22]
  • 2016 – The Ornament Museum, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
  • 2017 – The Crystal Land, White Cube, London
  • 2017 – Prismatic Park, Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York
  • 2018 – Island Universe, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston
  • 2018 – Cosmic Love, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
  • 2019 – Island Universe, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford
  • 2019 – Observations at Night, James Cohan Gallery, New York
  • 2021 – Libraries, James Cohan Gallery, New York
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Awards

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Permanent collections

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Books

  • Josiah McElheny: A Prism. Skira Rizzoli International, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8478-3415-0.
  • The Light Club: On Paul Scheerbart's 'The Light Club of Batavia'. University of Chicago Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-226-51457-4.

References

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