State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now
The Frist Art Museum
May 26, 2017 — September 10, 2017
My work Ialu was curated in to the original version of this exhibition as organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. A selection of pieces from the original exhibition (my work included) were purchased by Crystal Bridges and became a touring version of the exhibition. Related programming for the exhibition at the Frist Art Museum included a private reception for artists and museum members, an artist talk in the gallery and publication of a brief exhibition catalog. I additionally led a workshop on drawing machines and performed a 25 minute live score for the sculpture as part of the museum’s Frist Friday event series.
Ialu
wood, steel, plastic and electric motor
57 in. x 78 in. x 108 in.
2011
As installed at the Frist Art Museum.
A one minute excerpt from the live score performed at the First Art Museum on Friday June 30, 2017 to accompany my installation in the exhibition State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now. The score was written and performed in collaboration with Matthew Bogdan.
Historical influence for this work stems from ancient Egyptian beliefs regarding death. In this set of myths there exists Sekhet-Ialu (fields of reeds). The souls of deceased individuals must overcome a number of obstacles in their journey through the underworld before finally encountering Anubis who weighs the soul of the deceased against the feather of Ma’at. Righteous individuals are allowed to join the afterlife and each is granted a plot in the paradisiacal reed fields. With a literal translation of sekhet ialu giving “fields of reeds,” there is speculation among scholars that ialu (reeds) is the root of Elysian Fields, the Greek paradise for the blessed dead.
My childhood spent partially in the American Midwest figures into the equation as well. Persistent within the threads of American history and culture are romanticized notions of wide-open spaces. I see a direct relationship to the way a field of grain becomes an empire or a jungle or the underworld in the imagination. These ideas of fantasy broach the separation between mind space (virtual space), physical space, and the elusive edge between the two.
Ialu represents a phase of my kinetic work exploring modules that may be repeated or combined in a variety of ways to create a more immersive experience while facilitating greater flexibility and responsiveness to individual spaces during installation. Embracing the notion of interchangeable parts, Ialu exist in multiples created over several years with the ability to be constructed as one or more individual units, or linked together to create a larger super unit.