Josiah MCELHENY

Josiah McElheny is a master glassblower, but does not align his practice with the artisanal ethos of the studio glass movement. Instead of treating his hand-blown glass as finished works, he incorporates them into dazzling assemblages and installations that explore the history of aesthetics and examine how cultures have connected with physical objects throughout time. Recently, the artist has ventured into films, performances, and curatorial projects that engage with the utopian visions of various modernist endeavors. While deeply engaged with various epochs, his work is in every way contemporary.

Originally intending to study photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, McElheny was instead drawn to glassmaking—particularly the communal social structure and specialized knowledge it requires. He served as an apprentice to master glassblowers Ronald Wilkinson, Jan-Erik Ritzman, and Lino Tagliapietra, but also sought the lessons of historical figures he could never meet in person, ranging from the sixteenth-century Venetian glassblower Giacomo Verzelini (1522–1606) to the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, known for his influential (and infamous) lecture Ornament and Crime (1910). Carefully and methodically studying these predecessors, McElheny often recreates their designs,

not merely to serve as replicas of bygone eras but as newly formed objects engaging with viewers in the present.

Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt III (2011) comes from a body of work inspired bythe utopian designs and crystalline structures from a group of European Expressionist architects associated with the Glass Chain. Initiated by Bruno Taut in 1919, the Glass Chain was a means of exchanging ideas on spirituality in glass architecture by way of chain letter. McElheny’s candy-colored glass objects are reminiscent of Taut’s visions of brilliantly colored glass secular cathedrals tucked away in the mountains as well as the crystalline structures designed by Wenzel Hablik, the brothers Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, and other members of the group. McElheny’s use of mirrors to reflect his colorful glass forms creates a prismatic effect. The sculpture almost achieves a utopian state with its selfsustaining image extending infinitely into the future. Other important works by McElheny in this vein include The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown (2007), Model for a Film Set (2008), and Bruno Taut’s Monument to Socialist Spirituality (After Mies Van Der Rohe) (2009).

A 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, McElheny has also been featured on an episode on PBS’s Art 21. His work is deeply theoretical yet manages to be seductive with the pristine, reflective, and multiplicative qualities of his glass displays. McElheny’s work has been featured in numerous important solo exhibitions, including Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club, Wexner Center for the Arts (2013); Some Pictures of the Infinite, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2012); The Past Was A Mirage I’d Left Far Behind, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2011); Projects 84: The

Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown; A Space for an Island Universe, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009), The 1st at Moderna: The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007); Projects 84: Josiah McElheny, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007); and The Story of Glass, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (1999), among others. Notable group exhibitions include Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum Rotunda, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, International Biennial, SITE Santa Fe (2001); 2000 Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000); At Home in the Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago (1998), and many others.

His work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Seattle Art Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Yale University Art Gallery; Dallas Art Museum; and many others.

Source(s):

Originally presented at the June 20, 2013 Collections Committee.

Galleries:

Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York: http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/josiah-mcelheny/?view=bio

Articles:

"Art 21: Josiah McElheny," http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/josiah-mcelheny

"The New York Times" (June 14, 2012): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/arts/design/josiah-mcelheny-glass-artist-in-busy-times.html?pagewanted=all

"The Boston Globe" (June 16, 2012): http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2012/06/16/josiah-mcelheny-expanding-universe/gGLBUYC7KVanNCCjktMhGP/story.html

Books:

1. "Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club" (Hatje Cantz and Wexner Center for the Arts, 2013). Richard Fletcher, Bill Horrigan, Jeff Preiss, Josiah McElheny.

2. "Joseah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite" (Hatje Cantz and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2012). Maria Gough, Gregg Bordowitz, Josiah McElheny, and Helen Molesworth.

3. "Josiah McElheny: The Past Was a Mirage I’d Left Far Behind" (Whitechapel Gallery, 2012). Daniel Herrmann and Josiah McElheny.

4. "Josiah McElheny: A Prism" (Skira Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2010). Essays by Louise Neri, Dave Hicky, David H. Weinberg.

5. "The Light Club: On Paul Scheerbart's" The Light Club of Batavia (University of Chicago Press, 2010). Josiah McElheny.

6. "Josiah McElheny: A Space for an Island Universe" (Turner, 2009). Edited by Lynne Cooke.