Lee Boroson - Visiting Artist in Sculpture/Glass Area

Lee Boroson - Visiting Artist in Sculpture/Glass Area Date: November 12th Location: Binns-Merrill Hall, Room 106 (C) Time: 5pm

Lee Boroson’s will host a weeklong workshop in the glassblowing studio starting Tuesday November 12th through Friday November 15th from 9am – 4pm. We will convert the studio into a small scale factory to produce forms to be displayed at an forthcoming exhibition at Mass Moca. The Lava Field, in the upper mezzanine, will be made from over 100 clear, hand-blown blob-shaped vessels, the constant motion of which mimics the viscous, colored goo in a Lava Lamp.

MASS MoCA October 2014 – August 2015

Lee Boroson’s work begins with ideas of nature, mediating between the outdoors as “wild” or “untamed” and the idea of landscape as “cultured.” Using inflatables, fabric, and light to create physical and optical experiences that evoke such elemental forces as fire, smoke, wind, and fog, Boroson’s installations are both sculptural and ephemeral.

For MASS MoCA, the artist will create a new landscape in our Building 5 gallery, a football field sized space that is two stories high. The installation will consist of four components - The Fog, The Falls, The Crypt, and The Lava Field - which we will move through until finally reaching a vantage point on the mezzanine level that enables us to observe the vast landscape as one resolved image.

The Fog, which sets the stage for the exhibition, is a space where architecture is obliterated by the absence of all landmarks, preparing us for the journey ahead. The Fog will be a multi-layered construction, made from clear polished vinyl sheeting sewn with colored thread, creating passageways that lead into divided rooms. Every surface will be mostly transparent, punctuated by movies of mirrored reflections and color that alter our perception and scale of the space. The effect will be comparable to moving through shifting fog, with occasional long views that are partially obscured, while still allowing light to penetrate.

Next we move into The Falls, inspired by the tourist experience of visiting Niagara Falls, and are drawn “dangerously” close to Boroson’s construction, complete with an overwhelming white noise much like that of the actual site. The piece will be built from ceiling to floor and, using conveyor belts and blowers, will constantly spout streams of reflective spheres. Like a fountain, the material will be cycled back to the top and re- dropped. The spheres, shiny and silver, will reflect everything around them and, when in motion, give the magical effect of falling water. Essentially, The Falls, in its man-made aesthetic, relates to Niagara as a highly engineered and controlled area made to look completely natural. The two mezzanine galleries refer to underground and above ground geologic structures. In the lower mezzanine, The Crypt is an array of pneumatic fabric forms made into stalactites that evoke an architecture of the underworld, providing room for contemplation in a dark, gothic, primordial structure. The Lava Field, in the upper mezzanine, is made from over 100 clear, hand-blown blob-shaped vessels, the constant motion of which mimics the viscous, colored goo in a Lava Lamp. We will be invited to walk through these forms which emerge directly out of the raised floor, seeming to bubble up from the stone-like crypt below.

Each part of Boroson’s installation challenges perceptions of landscape and the relationship between the natural and the manufactured. We ultimately arrive atop the lava field and reflect on the totality of what we just experienced. It is an impossible view, one that we can never truly get from nature, but only in its construct.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a full color catalogue with multi-disciplinary texts from the exhibition curator, the artist, scientists, naturalists, and cultural philosophers.

Lee Boroson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.