Josiah McElheny "Proposals for a Chromatic Modernism"

Andrea Rosen Gallery (525 W 24th St)

poster for Josiah McElheny "Proposals for a Chromatic Modernism"

This event has ended.

The exhibition Proposals for a Chromatic Modernism is a devoted analysis of twentieth century modernism and its ideological legacies. Past projects have embodied mid-century notions of purity, transparency, and repetition and pushed them to their extremes. For this show, iconic period design is renewed and reattributed, and architectural schemes are altered and re-imagined. If twentieth century modernism became inexorably linked to the development of global capitalist culture, Proposals for a Chromatic Modernism sees McElheny attempting to revitalize this moment in aesthetics through a literal and figurative expansion of its palette. The exhibition's centerpiece is an eight-foot tall sculpture based on Mies van der Rohe's earliest model of a glass-clad skyscraper. Mies's model, as depicted in a series of photographs he took in 1922, is a transparent monolith that towers above a swarm of vernacular housing he designed to appear horrifying and decrepit. McElheny's sculpture, Bruno Taut's Monument to Socialist Spirituality (after Mies van der Rohe), is an enlarged version of this original maquette that recasts Mies's design in the spirit of rival architect Bruno Taut. Made from birch ply and stacked blocks of multi-colored glass, the model has been made anew to reflect Taut's belief in translucency (not transparency) and the transformative spiritual power of wildly colored enclosures.

Media

Schedule

from September 12, 2009 to October 17, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-09-13 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Josiah McElheny

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