Artist Stephen Hendee creates new museum installation with students

Stephen Hendee's installation piece, "Iron Skies," opens at the Johnson Museum Nov. 8. Matthew Ferrari/Johnson Museum Digitization Project

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell presents "Stephen Hendee: Iron Skies," which will be on view Nov. 8 to Jan. 4. Hendee is in residence at the museum until tomorrow, Nov. 7, creating the installation with the assistance of Cornell students.

Today, Nov. 6, Hendee will give a public lecture at 5:15 p.m. Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art, will lead a tour of the installation as part of the museum's Art for Lunch series Thursday, Nov. 13, at noon. Both events are free and open to the public. The exhibition and lecture have been funded in part by a grant from Cornell Council for the Arts.

"Installations are an important and exciting aspect of contemporary art," said Frank Robinson, the Richard J. Schwartz Director of the museum. "Stephen Hendee is a well-known and highly respected artist in this medium. We are proud to present his work."

Hendee creates new architectural spaces within the museum gallery that are at once sculptures and walk-in environments. Prompted by advances in technology and communication, Hendee blurs in his massive installations the boundaries between what is real and what is virtual, interior and exterior, natural and artificial, local and global. In this way his work functions as a response to our increasingly digitized world.

"While Hendee's installations may appear to be digitally rendered, he intentionally uses low-tech materials, such as corrugated plastic, black tape and hot glue," said Inselmann. "Although Hendee plans the general shape of his pieces in advance, the intricate design work occurs spontaneously in the gallery."

Hendee was born in 1968 and received his MFA from Stanford University in 1993. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Elizabeth Foundation Grant, and his work has been seen all over the country, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artist has been in residence at the Johnson Museum for three weeks. Students from different departments have had the opportunity to work with him in the gallery on the construction of the installation, and students have been able to set up one-on-one critiques in their studios.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Cornell Cinema will screen several science fiction films in November and December, including The Matrix, THX 1138, Equilibrium and David Cronenberg's Existenz. Hendee will introduce The Matrix Friday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Visit http://cinema.cornell.edu for more information.

The museum is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.