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Josiah McElheny: Possible Impossibilities
October 8, 2024
Over the last 10 years, artist and joyful polymath Josiah McElheny has brought sound and music into his visual artwork. He’s deeply interested in musicians trying to push against existing structures and expand the boundaries of both sound and imagination. Visionary German writer Paul Scheerbart spoke about how all utopias will fail, but it’s important to talk about them anyway. For Josiah, this kind of contradiction is a way forward; a way to imagine futures without glossing over all the things that are wrong with the world.
Among the artists he chose for his playlist is legendary jazz composer Sun Ra, who had a notion that everything in life was a kind of equation—balanced with the precision of the Fates—and that “the impossible attracts me, because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change.” This kind of push-pull can lead one to surprising places, and it’s something McElheny is looking for in music and art.
We talk at length about some of McElheny’s exhibitions which explore his thinking about music, including Dusty Groove (2014), Cosmic Love (2018), From Red Black to Black, From Blue Black to Black (2023) all at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, and Observations at Night (2019) at James Cohan in New York. The latter exhibition played host to a series of performances put on by the organization Blank Forms, on whose board McElheny sits.
McElheny’s galactic exhibition “Island Universe” is up now at LACMA in Los Angeles.
There are also upcoming screenings of “The Secret World,” a feature film made as a collaboration between McElheny and Jeff Preiss, on 10/25, 26, & 27 at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.
Josiah’s catalog for “Dusty Groove” with playable flexi-disc can be found here.
1 I Don't Believe in Love, Sun Ra
2 Stranger in Paradise, Sun Ra
3 Love in Outer Space, Sun Ra
4 Somebody Else's World - a.k.a. Somebody Else's Idea, Sun Ra
5 John Cage Interview with John Corbett & Terri Kapsalis
6 A New Note in Music Harry Partchs Kooky 1950s Instruments, Harry Partch
7 Note on the Mess w/David Grubbs, John Corbett & Heavy Friends
8 1 of 1 (Pt. 1), John Corbett & Heavy Friends
9 Babi, Milford Graves
10 Melts into surface, Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer
11 Cosmic Love, Joe McPhee
12 Paris 2022, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang
13 You May Dream, Phantom Orchard Ikue Mori Zeen Parkins
14 From Red Black to Black, from Blue Black to Black, David Grubbs
15 Shakey Jake, Joe McPhee
Josiah McElheny’s sculptures, paintings, installations, performances, and films engage with the history of ideas across wide-ranging fields of study—from literature to architecture, music theory, and astronomy—transforming this research into physical form. His works often combine glass or mirror with other materials, to emphasize the importance of the act of looking “as a subject in and of itself.” A skilled glassblower, McElheny frequently incorporates hand-blown and shaped glass within evocative assemblages, whose mode of presentation creates a sense of unsettled ideals, and a challenge to fixed definitions. For McElheny, glass—with its qualities of reflectivity, transparency, and enigmatic mutability—highlights the interactive potential between the object and viewer. The material serves as a productive agent, inciting chance encounters between forms and ideas that point toward alternative histories and futures.
Josiah McElheny (b. 1966, Boston, MA) has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA (2019); Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (2018); MAK Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2013), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2012), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England (2011), Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2007), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2007), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2002), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2001), The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (1999) and the Seattle Art Museum, WA (1995). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and Tate Modern, London, UK among others. McElheny lives and works in New York, New York.