Perfect Medium is the title that Lee Boroson gives to this three-part installation that suggests an ideal, self-contained world. The room is dominated by Outer Limit, a collection of 54 darkly luminescent building modules that form a rambling castle. The work was inspired by Thomas Cole’s painting, Voyage of Life: Youth, (1842), in which a youthful figure is drawn toward a dreamy castle that floats beyond the distant mountains like a mirage. Today, the desire to obtain such a fantastic abode is realized in the proliferation of palatial “McMansions” that signal wealth and success. Boroson distills the stylistic details into sleek building block-type units that can be endlessly reconfigured to create the perfect “home as castle”. The structure extends to the window sills where miniature, cumulus cloud models, exquisitely made of sterling silver and pearls are suspended from towers providing a perpetual source of water to the estate.

Outcropping is an inflatable sculpture that crowds the corner of the room so that visitors must pass around it to enter. This gray, brain-like form could also be a rock outcropping positioned in a garden to direct the viewer. On the opposite wall, Star Swarm (100 square degrees of sky), is a large digital print that compliments the earth-bound forms and poses a new way to think about our relationship to the cosmos. Working with scientists at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Boroson collapses the distance between stars in space to create an intense, compressed group of stars.

In total, the Perfect Medium installation also grows out of Boroson’s interest in Frederick Law Olmsted’s successful shaping of the landscape to create a particular experience of nature for public parks and private estates. In a similar way, Wave Hill is a fabricated setting, where picturesque architectural features, trees and gardens have been inserted in the landscape to underscore the natural beauty of the Palisades, the Hudson River, and the natural terrain.

An earlier version of this project was exhibited in Lee Boroson: Outer Limit, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, in 2005, with a forthcoming catalogue. Boroson has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions or projects at Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY; Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, Boston, MA; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond VA; Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Professional Development Grants from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, where he teaches. He received a MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, and a BFA from State University of New York at New Paltz. For more information visit www.leeboroson.com.

Outer Limit, 2005
wood (MDF Ultralight), sign paint
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY
Thanks to Ian Berry and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
Installation in Glyndor Gallery, Wave Hill, 2005

Outer Limit, 2005
detail

Outcropping, 2005
nylon fabric, blower, rayon cord, hardware
4' x 6' x 4'
Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY

Star Swarm (100 square degrees of sky), 2005
C-print (Lightjet)
50” x 50”
Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY
Thanks to Todd Boroson, Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a joint project of The University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, The Korean Scientist Group (KSG), the Los Alamons National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. Funding for the project has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society.