The Henry Art Gallery to host Josiah McElheny ~ Big Bang

Sunday, 09 March 2008 20:18

Seattle, WA - Josiah McElheny has grafted a distinguished art career out of two far-flung strands of contemporary art practice: conceptual art and the studio glass movement. Deploying the most sophisticated and virtuoso glass-working techniques, he makes installations and discrete sculptures that explore crucial moments in the development of modernity, its visual and theoretical undercurrents. Since his celebrated An Historical Anecdote about Fashion, commissioned by the Henry Art Gallery in 1999, McElheny’s work has focused primarily on comparing art to the history of the 20th century.  On exhibition 5 April through 13 July, 2008.
 
His interest in the history of modern science finds its fullest expression in The Last Scattering Surface. Working with astrophysicists at Ohio State University over several years, McElheny has created a vivid tangible model of the Big Bang, the explosion postulated to represent the beginnings of organic matter. Characteristically the form also quotes visual culture, specifically the gigantic chandeliers of New York’s arch-modern performance space, Lincoln Center.

When he was named a Macarthur Fellow the Foundation described his work as “objects of exceptional formal sophistication, exquisite craftsmanship, and conceptual rigor.”
 
Founded in 1927, the Henry was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The museum's major renovation and expansion, completed in April 1997, quadrupled the museum's size - from 10,000 square feet to over 40,000 square feet. Increased size allowed for the addition of a 154-seat auditorium, a multi-media gallery, café, bookstore and sculpture court along with improved facilities for art handling and storage and collections research. An architectural collage of glass, textured stainless steel and cast stone, designed by Charles Gwathmey, compliments the original red brick collegiate-Gothic structure designed by Carl Gould in the 1920s.
 
Visit The Henry Art Gallery at : www.henryart.org