Josiah McElheny
dal 12/10/2008 al 14/11/2008
Segnalato da
12/10/2008
Josiah McElheny
White Cube, London
The exhibition features Island Universe, an installation consisting of 5 sculptural elements that will occupy the entire ground floor of the gallery. Each of these elements is a kind of explosion of highly reflective chrome-plated aluminium, with a central sphere from which radiate rods of varying lengths; each rod ends with either a unique cluster of objects, which include smaller rods topped by hand-formed glass discs and globes, or a single light.
White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Josiah
McElheny. Over the past decade, McElheny has carved out a unique space in
contemporary art with sculptures and installations that fuse a sharp conceptual take
on cultural history with his expertise in glass manufacturing, along with other
materials. This exhibition, his second with White Cube, will feature 'Island
Universe', an installation consisting of five sculptural elements that will occupy
the entire ground floor of the gallery. Each of these five elements in 'Island
Universe' is a kind of explosion of highly reflective chrome-plated aluminium, with
a central sphere from which radiate rods of varying lengths; each rod ends with
either a unique cluster of objects, which include smaller rods topped by hand-formed
glass discs and globes, or a single light.
'Island Universe' is the most ambitious expression of a set of ideas that McElheny
has been exploring for a number of years and which he first articulated with 'An End
to Modernity' (2005). This spectacular sculpture, almost 5 metres across, is at once
a play on the Lobmeyr-designed chandeliers in New York's Metropolitan Opera and a
vivid diagram of the Big Bang. The design of these chandeliers and the discovery of
the first data supporting the Big Bang both occurred in 1965, and McElheny sees the
confluence of these two events as representative of a time when our understanding of
modernity started to fall apart, to be replaced by a new set of narratives. 'Island
Universe' is a fusion of design, science and the history of art, and the
installation seems to have arrived intact from the mid-sixties; at the same time,
the work is infused with contemporary sociology and cosmology.
McElheny collaborated with cosmologist David Weinberg for 'Island Universe' to
create abstract sculptures that are scientifically accurate models of Big Bang
theory as well as illustrations of the ideas that followed the general acceptance of
the theory. The varying lengths of the rods are based on measurements of time, the
clusters of glass discs and spheres accurately represent the clustering of galaxies
in the universe, and the light bulbs mimic the brightest objects that exist,
quasars. 'Island Universe' proposes a set of possibilities that could have burst
into existence depending on the amount of energy or matter present at the universe's
origin. The installation creates a three-dimensional map of what cosmologists call
'The Multiverse', a set of variations and materializations of other potential
universes. In this unlikely collision of interior design and cosmology, McElheny
finds a host of ideas that intersect modernity's ruins, the history of metaphysics
and abstract art to create a work of breathtaking formal beauty.
The exhibition also includes a film, with a newly commissioned soundtrack by Paul
Schütze. Filmed on location in Super 16mm at the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York, each of its five sections depict the types of universes in the installation,
and each section is titled based on the theoretical structure of each element, such
as Small Scale Violence, Frozen Structure, and Late Emergence. The music and the
editing convey a rhythm that shifts, freezes and develops in relation to the
scientific speculations about other worlds.
A fully illustrated catalogue, with contributions from David Weinberg, Molly Nesbit,
Thomas Ryckman, Craig Hogan and Craig Burnett will accompany the exhibition.
Josiah McElheny lives and works in New York. He has exhibited widely, including solo
shows at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007), Museum
of Modern Art, New York (2007), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de
Compostela, Spain (2002), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2001), The
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (1999). Group shows include the Wexner
Center for the Arts, Ohio (2005),CCA Watts Institute for Contemporary Arts, San
Francisco (2003), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2001), Whitney Biennial, New York
(2000) and The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (1998).
Preview Monday 13 October 2008, 6-8pm
White Cube
48 Hoxton Square - London
White Cube is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.
Free admission