Josiah McElheny
American, 1966-
Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt III, 2011
hand-blown molded glass objects, colored sheet glass laminated to low-iron mirror, two-way mirror, glass diffuser, electric lighting, birch plywood and steel display structure
56 x 57 x 30 in.
SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the SBMA Visionaries and the Ludington Fund
2013.8a-g
“Of all the common materials available to artists, glass may be the most malleable, the easiest to change, the most constant, at the molecular level constantly moving, and perhaps most important, the most durable. There are paintings and works of art made with canvas and wood that are just a couple hundred years old and faded or in poor condition due to aging. And there are works of glass that are 500 years old or 3,500 years old that are still intact and as powerful and beautiful as in their beginning.”
- Josiah McElheny
COMMENTS
Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt I is a sculpture-as-model that provides a kaleidoscopic vision of a citylandscape built out of colored, fractured, crystalline forms. The six-sided freestanding sculpture is electrically-lit and clad in a seamless plywood surface; six windows of two-way mirror look into a twisting, mutable and horizon-less landscape. The environment within consists of a series of scale models of buildings based on drawings by architects Wenzel Hablik and Wassili Luckhardt from 1919-1921; the drawings were translated into three-dimensional metal molds in order to shape the colored glass into rough-hewn structures for a crystalline architecture. Part of the post-WWI explorations of a group of architects that included Walter Gropius, Hablik and Luckhardt’s work represented a never-built alternative to the modernism that prized the grid and efficiency. In this work, McElheny expands the picture of what this might look like, emphasizing the hopefulness that might come from complexity, diversity, or a multitude of approaches.
[A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the “genius” grant)], Josiah McElheny, lives and works in New York. He has exhibited widely including recent solo museum projects at the The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009), Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007), and MoMA, New York (2007). Recent books include, “A Space for an Island Universe”, published by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Turner Publications (2009), “Prism”, a significant monograph published by Rizzoli (2010) and “The Light Club”, an artist’s book published by the University of Chicago (2010).
- "Josiah McElheny," ArtNews, Web, 13 November 2010
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
The utopian visions of modernist designers and architects find new form in the masterful glass sculptures of Josiah McElheny. Through the medium of glass, the artist resurrects objects from the past and casts them in a new light.
Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt III is influenced by the Glass Chain: a group initiated in 1919 that exchanged ideas on glass architecture and its spiritual potential through chain letters. The shapes of McElheny’s colorful glass objects derive from the crystalline structures designed by Wenzel Hablik, the brothers Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, and others.
- Contemporary to Modern, 2014
Josiah McElheny utilizes the medium of glass to examine how cultures have connected with physical objects throughout time. From Renaissance masters to modernist designers, he has sought the lessons of the past to inform his work. From Verzelini's Acts of Faith: The Last Supper According to Bonifacio Pitati and Beato Angelico features a quasi-historical text written by McElheny alongside his hand-blown wine glasses and tumblers—foregrounding questions of authenticity in art and museum display.
Ornament and Crime references Austrian architect Adolf Loos’s influential 1910 lecture in which Loos championed simplicity in modern art and design while deeming ornamentation as primitive and degenerate. McElheny created exacting copies of Loos’s bar glass, but in an intense white notorious for showing even the slightest imperfections.
Crystalline Landscape After Hablik and Luckhardt III is influenced by the visions of the Glass Chain: a group initiated in 1919 that exchanged ideas on spirituality in glass architecture through chain letters. The shapes of McElheny’s colorful glass objects derive from the crystalline structures designed by Wenzel Hablik, the brothers Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, and others.
- Labour and Wait, 2013