‘PROJECTS 84: JOSIAH McELHENY’ AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

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NEW YORK CITY — The Museum of Modern Art presents “Projects 84: Josiah McElheny” on view February 12–April 9 in the Contemporary Galleries, second floor.

For “Projects 84,” Josiah McElheny (American, b 1966) creates a large-scale sculptural model of crystalline glass, colored electric lights, metal, and painted wood. His installation is both a materialization of and meditation on the visionary writings and sketches of Paul Scheerbart, a Berlin novelist and utopian fabulist, and Bruno Taut, the leader of a circle of revolutionary architects that emerged in Germany after World War I.

Scheerbart and Taut envisioned a brave new world of illuminated, colored glass architecture rising out of the ashes of war-ravaged Europe. McElheny evokes this sublime glass utopia, with its ideals of spiritual fulfillment and social amelioration, in his model-scale landscape of two abstract, crystalline structures, “Alpine Cathedral” and “City-Crown,” comprised of hollow glass modules whose varied prismatic forms are rough-hewn and handcrafted. The installation will be on view in a gallery adjacent to “Out of Time: A Contemporary View” in the second-floor Contemporary Galleries.

The Museum of Modern Art is at 11 West 53rd Street. For information, www.moma.org or 212-708-9400.