Chromed aluminium, handblown glass and electric lights. Courtesy of Todd-White Art Photography
Five years after his first show at the White Cube gallery, Seattle-based sculptor Josiah McElheny returns to the London art scene and to the White Cube. The preview of his latest exhibition last Monday was full of people who had come to admire the five elements composing his latest installation (and to also indulge in some healthy art-socializing with the hip Shoreditch crowd). It was certainly worth the trip.
I found myself surrounded by five spheres of chrome-plated aluminium with radiate rods, each of them ending with smaller rods with glass globes or lights. As I edged closer to one of them, I caught my distorted reflection in the centre of the sphere. I felt as though I was in a spaceship in which the pilot had suddenly accelerated to the speed of sound (well, at least that’s the way it looks like in movies…).
In creating this installation, entitled Island Universe, Josiah collaborated with cosmologist David Weinberg, and sought to accurately represent the Big Bang. The rods are indeed based on measurements of time, the glass discs and spheres on the clustering of galaxies and the lights on quasars (the brightest objects that exist in our universe).
The film upstairs is a real art video in 16mm of Josiah’s installations at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The music from Paul Schutze gives rhythm to the images, and guides them as they guide it.
With Island Universe, Josiah McElheny has done a fabulous job, which is both very smart and aesthetically strong. Above all, he has successfully managed to reconcile art and science, which are too often torn apart.
Exhibition runs until the 15th of November 2008.
