Ellen Harvey
Mirror
15 October 2005 - 8 January 2006
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
www.pafa.org
Opening Reception: October 14, 2005, 6-8 p.m.
A hall of mirrors engraved with a ruined dopplegänger of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Ethereal illumination. A building that comes to life as if imbued with supernatural powers. Shattering mirrors. Burning buildings. These are just a few of the descriptions of Brooklyn-based artist Ellen Harvey’s upcoming installation, Mirror, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ from October 15, 2005, to January 8, 2006. The installation will be on view in the rotunda of the 1876 historic landmark building, holding a literal mirror up to the Victorian Gothic, Frank Furness and George Hewitt-designed building.
In the installationa nearly true to form re-creation of the elegant central stair hall featuring reverse-engraved mirrors and video projectionvisitors find themselves in an astonishing environment that is both a variation on the Academy’s interior and an entirely new artwork. Playing with the idea of the representational foundations of the Academys original teaching methods, Harvey bestows upon the Academy the ultimate representational art work: a mirror. She also offers the viewer a seductively narcissistic experience, where he or she, according to Harvey, becomes a star in a secret, abandoned place that is your ownyour reflection also becomes the art.
Each of the four walls of the rotunda are hung with 12-by-9-foot mirrors, each composed of 16 mirror panels, hand engraved by Harvey on the reverse, that when assembled as a grid, form a view of each corner of the Academys soaring stair hall. The reverse engraved drawings are illuminated from behind so the lines of the drawings glow. The mirror installation is accompanied by a central video projection, projected in the same dimensions as the mirror panels, that documents the process of Harvey engraving the mirrors and shows the frontal view of the stair hall. Visible in each of the 16 incremental drawings is the video camera in the act of recording the drawing coming to life. During the drawings evolution on the video screen, the artist is visible only as a shadow that temporarily obstructs the glowing lines. At the conclusion of the hour-long video, all 16 mirrors shatter.
Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the Academy interior depicted in the mirror drawings and central video projection is far from accurate. Instead of faithfully representing the Academys carefully maintained central stair hall, Mirror showcases a space that has become the kind of picturesque ruin from which Victorian Gothic architecture took its inspiration. In Harveys version, plants have sprouted, arches crumble, plaster deteriorates, and boards cover the museums entry doors. The Academy-as-ruin extends beyond the mirror drawings and video and onto the very walls of the museum itself. Using faux-finishing techniques, Harvey ages the walls of the rotunda gallery, complimenting the video and mirror engravings hanging in the same space.
Ellen Harvey may be best known for her New York Beautification Project (1999-2001), the subject of a new book by the same name, for which she painted 40 exquisitely detailed oil reproductions of 19th-century landscape paintings on graffiti sites throughout New York City. She is also known for her installations in the museum interventionist mode for institutions such as the Whitney Museum, the Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, and the Secession, Vienna.
The exhibition is curated by Alex Baker, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Academy, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog that includes Harveys previous projects with essays by Baker and Shamim M. Momin, Associate Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The catalog will be available in December in the Academys retail store Portfolio and also through Distributed Art Publishers, New York in spring 2006.
Academy hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Academy is located at 118-128 N. Broad Street in Philadelphia, two blocks north of City Hall.
This project has been supported by a grant from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
