Portrait of the artist visiting Tsé Bit’a’í (Shiprock), Navajo Nation, January 2020
Franconia Sculpture Park is pleased to present Andrew Erdos: The Flash of Silver Breaths on the Wing of the Sky, opening January 16, 2021 in the Mardag Gallery at Franconia Commons. Taking its name from Joy Harjo’s 1989 Secrets from the Center of the World, Erdos’ solo exhibition explores themes of geological time, industrial ruin, infinite space, and the horizon.
The exhibition includes three bodies of work existing as an invocation of fire, cold and fading winter light, and a mutually-arranged sacred objects. It is no surprise that an exhibition that celebrates and honors the isolation man feels in nature was largely made during a global lockdown. Simultaneously fragile and powerful, the work foretells winter’s dawn through metaphorical landscapes.
Erdos’ “Cauldrons” evoke artificial mountains created by pouring hundreds of layers of molten glass over a galvanized steel armature, built around a water-filled basin and attached to a discarded wooden pallet. The final object references the opposing worlds of an alpine glacial lake, frozen lava, and calcified by-products of industry. The “Incantations” series consists of slabs of crushed, faceted glass fused to large, hollow glass bubbles that reside somewhere between a glacier, a giant crystal, and a bonfire. This geological and celestial lineage is completed by a group of blown glass vessels, referencing the moon and collective human consciousness. These “Moon Jars” are created by fusing molten aluminum to the interior of the vessel or covering the exterior with coal.
Andrew Erdos: The Flash of Silver Breaths on the Wing of the Sky opens at Franconia Commons on Saturday, January 16, 2021 with a public reception from 4pm-6pm. During the opening, Erdos will create a new, outdoor sculpture covered in 2000 degree liquid aluminum that will be on display at Franconia through 2022. Please join us around the fire pit of Franconia Commons for heavy metal music and molten metal art as Erdos creates this new work, assisted by local artists. Andrew Erdos: The Flash of Silver Breaths on the Wing of the Sky will run until April 11, 2021.
Please also join us for a virtual “Dinner & Discussion” lecture with Andrew Erdos in collaboration with FOCI – Minnesota Center for Glass Arts at 6pm on Tuesday, January 12th via Facebook Live.
Andrew Erdos, Incantations, blown and cast class, 48 x 42 x 50 inches, 2017
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrew Erdos (b. 1985) is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His practice often combines traditional glass blowing and sculpting techniques with new media art installations. His work has been shown internationally at venues including: The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City); The Orland Art Museum; the Oklahoma City Museum of Art; The Corning Museum of Class; The State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia); Deitch Projects (New York); and The National Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow). Erdos has upcoming exhibitions at 53 West 53 designed by Jean Nouvel (New York) and the Hunterdon Art Museum in New Jersey. Erdos’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the 21C Museum in Durham, the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and permanently installed in the city of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt as part of the Reviving Humanity Memorial.
About Franconia Sculpture Park
Franconia Sculpture Park is the pre-eminent, artist-centered sculpture park in the Midwest. Founded in 1996, Franconia provides physically and intellectually wide-open spaces that inspire new ways of thinking through access to contemporary sculpture, installation and land art. Located in the scenic St. Croix River Valley, Franconia operates a 43-acre outdoor museum, active artist residency program, and a depth and breadth of arts programming for a diverse and engaged public.
Franconia is located at 29836 St. Croix Trail in Shafer, Minnesota, and is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 8am to 8pm. Please visit us at www.franconia.org.
Contact:
Alyssa Auten, Communications & Creative Director
Franconia Sculpture Park
[email protected] | www.franconia.org
