Josiah McElheny was born
in Boston, Massachusetts in 1966, and lives and works in Brooklyn,
New York. He received a BFA from
the Rhode Island School of Design, and apprenticed
with master glassblowers Ronald Wilkins, Jan-Erik Ritzman, Sven-Ake
Caarlson, and Lino Tagliapietra. McElheny creates finely crafted,
handmade glass objects that he combines with photographs, text,
and museological displays to evoke notions of meaning and memory.
Whether recreating miraculous glass objects pictured in Renaissance
paintings or modernized versions of nonextant glassware from
documentary photographs, or extrapolating stories about the daily
lives of ancient peoples through the remnants of their glass
household possessions, Josiah McElheny’s work takes as
its subject the object, idea, and social nexus of glass. Influenced
by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, McElheny’s work often
takes the form of ‘historical fiction’—which
he offers to the viewer to believe or not. Part of McElheny’s
fascination with storytelling is that glassmaking is part of
an oral tradition handed down generation to generation, artisan
to artisan. In “Total Reflective Abstraction” (2003-04),
the mirrored works themselves refract the artist’s self-reflexive
examination. Looking at a reflective object becomes a metaphor
for the act
of reflecting on an idea. Sculptural models of Modernist ideals,
these totally reflective environments are both elegant seductions
as well as parables of the vices of utopian aspirations. Recipient
of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1995) and the 15th
Rakow Commission from the Corning Museum of Glass, McElheny has
had one-person exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle;
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, San Francisco; and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea,
Santiago de Compostela. His work has been exhibited at SITE
Santa Fe and the Whitney Biennial (2000).
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York | Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
Josiah McElheny on the Art21 blog |
