Josiah McElheny at Brent Sikkema

After Athanasius Kircher's Search for the Geometry of Illusion is the title of individual of the best pieces in Josiah McEIheny's new show (all works 2003). The title, the pres release informed us, leaves to the researches of a 17th-century Jesuit priest and scientist. In fact, the allure of the statuary itself has rendered McEIheny's habit of providing a narrative history for his phenomenons somewhat superfluous. The piece is an immaculately fabricateed vitrine with mahogany supports and a mirrored floor. Inside is a put of geometric solids in mirrored inflated glass crafted by McElheny. The existences are entrancing in a slightly obvious way, and each individual presents a warped mirror reflection of the viewer, the supports of the casing and the surrounding gallery environment, all stretched lengthy and tall by a slim cylinder, or returned in a fish-eye view through a fat lozenge. The upside-down reflections in the mirrored floor of the case double everything, for a like reason the image of each solid gains a twin in finished vertical symmetry. The pristine self-contained world of the statuary is both hermetic and inclusive, sealed not upon and full of the world around it. The title calls to mind the importance of mirroring in scientific exploration, the one and the other on the macro and the micro scale, while the confusing images at handed by the sculpture reminds us of the paradoxes entailed in shut observation.

Several of the other pieces in the exhibit followed the same format on the contrary rang a number of variations upon the theme. Historical Renaissance, Mirrored and throw backed (Decorated) complicates the perceptual space of the vitrine by means of adding a back mirror, thereby quadrupling the illusionary space. The facts inside are also more compound with a period feeling as implied through the title. In addition, their surfaces are overlayed with a tracery of drawn lines, scratched into the mirroring, further fracturing the faculty of perception of solidity, and making it impossible to read the reflections in any coherent way.

In the back scope all by itself, was Modernity, Mirrored and mirrored Infinitely. In this case, mirror lining, a brow wall of half-mirrored glass, internal lighting and depressed light in the surrounding gallery eliminated any reflections from outside the vitrine and created an enclos world in which the box's contenteds were reflected ad infinitum. While the mirrored receptacle with infinite reflections is a somewhat hackneyed trick, this piece is certainly an engaging example of the genre with a true different emotional resonance from the other pieces in the display Ultimately, it seemed to me that, shorn of its witty narrative support, this work revisits ideas that have been overlayed in different ways by artists similar as Jeff Keens, Charles LeDray, Anish Kapoor, Allan McCollum and Kiki Smith. Nevertheless, McEIheny's manipulation of general concerns with craft, perception and the perennial issue of the single and the many, is assured and visually engrossing.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group