Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club

Using glass to explore a provocative range of artistic and intellectual concerns, Josiah McElheny (*1966 in Boston) produces dazzling fabricated objects that address such subjects as the nature of visual perception, the narratives of modernism, and the origin of the universe. Since 2007 he has produced a series of sculptures and a film inspired by The Light Club of Batavia, a 1912 text by German Expressionist writer Paul Scheerbart.

This publication focuses on McElheny’s Light Club works, which investigate the role of glass in utopian ideas about modernist architecture, and features essays by curator Bill Horrigan and film scholar Thomas Gunning, shorter texts by visual artists Jeff Preiss and Jason Simon, a commentary by classicist Richard Fletcher, a conversation among Horrigan, artist Doug Ashford, and curator Helen Molesworth, entries on McElheny’s art objects by art historians Lisa Florman and Kris Paulsen, and the script, by poet Rachel Zolf, for McElheny’s 2012 Light Club film.