The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents the first museum survey of Josiah McElheny, in an exhibition on view from June 22 through October 14, 2012.
McElheny uses the ancient and labor intensive medium of glass to create objects of exceptional beauty and formal sophistication. An artist of diverse interests, McElheny draws on art history, politics, and astronomy to encode his glassworks with information, turning these exquisite objects into repositories of meaning. A mid-career survey of the artist’s work, Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite traces the artist’s investigations into the representation of time and space, and in particular, the concept of infinity. McElheny’s interest in this subject can be seen in early works that deal with the problem of how to represent archeological time––using glass shards and fragments––up through his most recent explorations of the Big Bang and astronomical time. Organized by Helen Molesworth, the Barbara Lee Chief Curator of the ICA, Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite features 21 works, including sculpture, installation, film, photography, performance and a new large-scale work which will make its debut at the museum.
Josiah McElheny was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1966, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a B.F.A. (1989) from the Rhode Island School of Design and was an apprentice to master glassblowers Jan-Erik Ritzman, Sven-Ake Carlsson, and Lino Tagliapietra. Recipient of a 2006 MacArthur Fellowship, McElheny has had numerous exhibitions at museums in the U.S. and abroad, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Josiah McElheny: Some Pictures of the Infinite at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston is the artist’s first U.S. museum survey.
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