Josiah McElheny

Opening 1 December at 6-8 pm

In Josiah McElheny’s sculptural installation The Alp Cathedral and the City-Crown two glass objects rise like towers from a table-like wooden plinth. These transparent glass structures are illuminated with different colours in succession, giving a fairytale impression.

Josiah McElheny’s art can be seen as a multifaceted dialogue with art history, often starting in a fascination for the interplay between modernism and modernity. His knowledge and skills in glassblowing and glass techniques have led him to explorations of phenomena such as reflection, transparency and opacity.

The Alp Cathedral and the City-Crown are based on the German modernist architect Bruno Taut’s (1880-1938) and the poet Paul Scheerbart’s (1863-1915) visionary ideas on glass architecture. McElheny has designed what existed only as ideas on paper; he has created a three-dimensional interpretation of the ideas of Taut and Scheerbart on a new, harmonious world of coloured and illuminated glass architecture that would rise from the ruins of the devastated European continent after the First World War. The transparency of glass can be seen as a metaphor for the modernist idea of intellectual transparency. The unpolished, imperfect surface can allude to the impossibility of this and of making utopias into reality. And yet, this aspiration is fascinating, inspiring and necessary.

Moderna Museet’s presentation of its permanent collection strives to explore art history from a contemporary perspective. Josiah McElheny operates in a similar way as an artist and presents his works not in a separate gallery, as in the Museum of Modern Art in New York earlier this year, but in dialogue with Moderna Museet’s early modernist collection, alongside works by Vladmir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich and Hilma af Klint.

The plethora of utopian ideas we encounter in visionary theories from the first decades of the 20th century in this exhibition gallery also reflect a vital aspect of McElheny’s oeuvre. His own artistic universe is inclusive and generous. It embraces thoughts and emotions and inspires the viewer to have a similar openness and curiosity.

Josiah McElheny was born in Boston, USA in 1966 and now lives and works in New York. More information on the artist available at www.modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template1.asp?id=3637

Opening 1 December at 6-8 pm Venue: Permanent collection, Floor 4 At 6.15 pm, the artist Josiah McElheny will talk to Iris Müller-Westermann, curator at Moderna Museet.

The 1st at Moderna is an exhibition programme for contemporary art. The opening is always on the first day of the month, and the exhibitions are in different venues in or outside the museum. The 1st at Moderna is sponsored by VINGE.

The 1st at Moderna in December:
Josiah McElheny: The Alp Cathedral and the City-Crown