Josiah McElheny

Josiah McElheny
Born 1966
United States
Nationality American
Education Rhode Island School of Design
Known for Sculpture, Assemblage
Awards MacArthur Fellows Program

Josiah McElheny (born in 1966, United States) 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 "genius grant". He currently lives and works in New York City.

He has exhibited his work at national and international venues including the Museum of Modern Art, Orchard, and Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, Institut im Glaspavillon in Berlin, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, White Cube in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Work

Josiah McElheny's work addresses history, modernism, cosmology, reflection, infinity, purity and utopia, and has clear links to the work of the American abstract artist Donald Judd. His work also sometimes deals with issues of museological displays and one's attempts to derive inferences about historical peoples from their household possessions and objects.

The artist has also expressed interest in glassblowing as part of an oral tradition handed down generation to generation.

One of the artist's ongoing projects has been characterized as an "investigation into the origins of the universe." "An End to Modernity" (2005), 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, was commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. "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 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[1] and in Madrid.[2]

In earlier works, the artist has played with notions of "history" and "fiction." Examples of this are works that recreate Renaissance glass objects pictured in Renaissance paintings and modern (but lost) glass objects from documentary photographs (such as works by Adolf Loos). McElheny has mentioned the influence of the writings of Jorge Luis Borgesin his work.

Education

McElheny received his B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. As part of that program, in 1987 he trained under Master Glassblower Ronald Wilkins in London, England, and also studied at Rome, Italy in the Rhode Island School of Design European Honors Program.

After graduating, he was an apprentice to Master Glassblower Jan-Erik Ritzman and Sven-Ake Caarlson (in Transjö, Sweden) from 1989–1991; and an apprentice to Master Glassblower Lino Tagliapietra (various locations: Seattle, Washington, New York, New York, Switzerland) from 1992-1997.

Teaching and professional experience

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Awards and fellowships

Books

References

  1. ↑ "The Big Picture" by Alex Browne, The New York Times, September 26, 2008. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
  2. ↑ "Josiah McElheny and David Weinberg: From the Big Bang to Island Universe" Wexler Center press release on a joint conversation May 6, 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2009.