![]() ![]() “For a very long time, since childhood, they just brought me so much joy,” he said.Īnd yet, the ride and amusement parks have a less delightful history that Hill references in this exhibition. Speaking at the Radcliffe Institute in 2019, Hill explained his affinity with roller coasters. In “Brake Run Helix,” Hill sees the roller coaster itself as a performance, with the people watching included as part of the production. More recently, though, he’s been pivoting away from the focus on himself and his emotionally, physically taxing and even dangerous performance pieces. At the Venice Biennial in 2017, he created a wooden roller coaster sculpture and walked the tracks high above the ground. As a master’s degree candidate at UCLA, he developed as an endurance and performance artist, eventually incorporating roller coaster themes in his work. Roller coasters have been a recurring theme in Hill’s latest works, and represent an evolution of his approach to art. Wood, LED Neon Flex, and durational performance. The Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo: Adam Reich The MASS MoCA team worked with an engineering firm on the structure and has been installing it for the last couple of weeks.ĮJ Hill, A Monumental Offering of Potential Energy, 2016. Accessed from the mezzanine level, it’ll send riders down to a stage, “like a pink ribbon,” Foradas says. The back half will be devoted to the roller coaster. The sculptures, taking up the first half of the space, are made largely out of reused materials, referencing the materiality of backyard roller coasters. “As you walk into Building 5, the first half will be a new series of Hill’s sculptures that he worked with our team to create,” says Alexandra Foradas, the curator for this show. (You'll need to sign up to get your turn on the roller coaster.) (Trained operators and safety protocols will be in place.) Benches will be set up for people to watch as they would at an amusement park. The roller coaster, with its single-person cart powered by gravity, will run on 250 yards of pink metal track in a figure-eight pattern. Hill’s first solo museum exhibit - and largest exhibition to date - incorporates freestanding sculptures, paintings, and a stage for performances. 28, Gallery 5 welcomes Los Angeles-based artist EJ Hill and his “Brake Run Helix” exhibition, which includes his own monument to joy - a working roller coaster. Despite the deeper meanings behind each of these installations, the 250,000-square-foot gallery can feel like a hall of wonders. We’ve craned our necks for hours gazing up at artist Xu Bing’s two monumental phoenixes in flight navigated our way through innumerable glittering lawn ornaments hung low from the ceiling in Nick Cave’s “Until” and followed Trenton Doyle Hancock’s rainbow-colored path to step inside his giant mound sculptures in his “Mind of the Mound” installation. MASS MoCA in North Adams has been around long enough that after an installation vacates Building 5, we’re trained to wonder what will dazzle us next. ![]()
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