Josiah McElheny
dal 28/9/2006 al 14/11/2006
Segnalato da
28/9/2006
Josiah McElheny
Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
Cosmology, Design, and Landscape-Part One, the first of a two-part exhibition by the artist. Both exhibitions continue his investigation of the history and implications of twentieth-century modernism. Part One features new work that revolves around the unusual intersection of theoretical cosmology and industrial design.
Cosmology, Design, and Landscape-Part One
Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present Cosmology, Design, and Landscape-Part One, the first of a two-part exhibition by Josiah McElheny. Both exhibitions—the second will open in spring 2007—continue his investigation of the history and implications of twentieth-century modernism. Part One features new work that revolves around the unusual intersection of theoretical cosmology and industrial design.
Since 2004, McElheny has collaborated with University of Ohio cosmology professor David Weinberg on the conceptual realization of a series of sculptures that depict the theory of the Big Bang with the language of mid-1960s industrial design. This unexpected pairing of high modernist thought finds its origins in 1965, the year the Big Bang was first confirmed by physical evidence and when the Viennese firm Lobmeyr and Co. were commissioned to design a chandelier with a “galactic appearance" for New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House. The serendipity of these two events inspired McElheny to create this new series of scientifically accurate, precisely manufactured sculptures.
For Part One, McElheny debuts the latest work in the series, The Last Scattering Surface. Also on view is his first film, Conceptual Drawings for a Chandelier, 1965, which was shot in part on location at the Metropolitan Opera House, as well as a series of related photographs and digital images.
The Last Scattering Surface, the title of his ten-foot spherical sculpture of gleaming metal and glass that floats just inches from the floor, refers to both the history of modernism and the science of the Big Bang. The mid-1960s is the moment when the limitations of modernist thought, with its propensity to narrate history as a single story about progress, became extremely clear. After modernism’s heyday there was a “scattering" of histories, and narratives about culture began to be spoken from many viewpoints.
But the poetry of the title comes directly from the scientific concepts the sculpture represents. The “last scattering surface" is the scientific term used to describe the moment when the universe transitioned from opaque to transparent, when the light particles that filled the hot early cosmos decoupled from normal matter and began to travel freely through space. Subtle variations in the intensity of this light were the result of fluctuations in temperature and density; these seeds of variation have grown by gravity into the galaxies, stars, and planets that fill the universe today.
The works in Cosmology, Design, and Landscape-Part One describe the process by which early structures determine the forms that surround us, but how they also carry with them the seeds of explosive change: the drive to uniformity in the twentieth-century eventually undone by the pluralism of post-modernity, the universe made possible by inconsistency at its start.
Josiah McElheny has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, and this month was named a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. Much of the background behind the works in the exhibition can be found in the recent artist book published by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Notes on a Sculpture and a Film.
If you would like more information, please contact Tiffany Tummala at 312.455.0100.
Reception for the Artist, Friday, September 29, 5-7:30 pm
The reception is free and open to the public.
Donald Young Gallery
933 W Washington Blvd Chicago, IL 60607
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 to 5:30 and Saturday, 11:00 to 5:30.