Wexner Center for the Arts presents Josiah McElheny. Towards a Light Club on January 27–April 7, 2013.
Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club explores the history of modernist utopias in a series of kaleidoscopic projections, narrative films, stunning illuminated sculptures, and humorous performances. Towards a Light Club presents McElheny’s wide-ranging investigations of the work of the German expressionist writer Paul Scheerbart. From mesmerizing installations combining glass and other materials, to collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and poets, these exquisite artworks propose new perspectives on the age-old metaphor of light. Organized by Bill Horrigan, curator at large at the Wexner Center, the exhibition culminates in a “glass cinema” screening McElheny’s The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture (2012). A lush and evocative vision of ruined utopia, the film is a stylized adaptation of Scheerbart’s 1912 novella “The Light Club of Batavia.” (McElheny is a former Wexner Center residency artist and the film was post-produced at the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio.)
A catalogue copublished by the Wexner Center and Hatje Cantz accompanies the exhibition. Featuring essays by Horrigan and film scholar Tom Gunning (University of Chicago) and additional texts by eight other authors, the book also includes the screenplay for The Light Club of Vizcaya by poet Rachel Zolf, a short story by McElheny himself, and a foreword by Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin. The exhibition is made possible with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Ohio State University
1871 N. High Street
Columbus, OH 43210
T 614 292 3535
www.wexarts.org
