VAN MCELWEE: TIME FORK

October 11, 2020–May 9, 2021

Laumeier Sculpture Park is proud to present Van McElwee: Time Fork. McElwee, a local media artist, will create an Augmented Reality environment contemplating choices and possibilities, each choice crafting a new world. Created from a topographical drone mapping of Laumeier, imagined structures will be placed virtually within the landscape at Laumeier. McElwee’s interactive application incorporates both sculpture and the natural landscape that will offer an alternative Laumeier experience for visitors using their hand-held personal devices. Time Fork will be a remarkable setting for pondering the nature of choices, time, and reality itself.

Time Fork, organized as a walking tour of the Park viewed through the lens of technology, entertains a playful fiction: roughly a thousand years ago, time branched to create a parallel world. In McElwee’s installation he will use Augmented Reality to reveal features of a settlement that exists in that parallel or even future world, overlapping what we know as Laumeier Sculpture Park. McElwee explains: “We see structures that could be under construction or in ruins; they could have a ritual, municipal or even an industrial function. Using phones or tablets as windows, viewers can fully explore these mysteries, inside and out, a tool that is at least conceptually, archeological and anthropological.”

Laumeier’s Curator Dana Turkovic states: “Laumeier is very excited to present this groundbreaking interactive project that allows visitors to take a solo journey using their own devices to explore a parallel world built to excite curiosity and wonder. McElwee’s project takes the idea of touring the Park to another conceptual level, Time Fork is an online portal of discovery, creating an experience that is both virtual and real.”

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Van McElwee received his MFA in Multimedia 1978 from Washington University School of Art and his BFA in Printmaking in 1973 from the Memphis College of Art. Selected installations and one-person shows include: Anthology Film Archives, New York; ARTpool in Budapest; The Shanghai Duolun Museum of Art, China; Galerie Trabant, Austria; Rencontres Video Art Plastique in France; Berkeley Museum of Art Pacific Film Archive, California; The Marsh Gallery at the University of Richmond, Virginia; Medienwerkstatt in Vienna and Ohio University Gallery of Art. Selected group shows and festivals include: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Paula Cooper Gallery New York; The Long Beach Museum of Art; Ars Electronica, ZKM, Siggraph; Camden Arts Centre, London; Wexner Center for the Arts; Milwaukee Art Museum; Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo; ASIFA Austria, Museum Quartier, Vienna; Worldwide Video Festival at the Stedelijk Museum; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Art in General, New York; Digital Dance Festival, Seoul, South Korea and Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille, France. His grants and awards include: A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship; The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Independent Production Fund. McElwee’s work is represented by Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, The Kitchen in New York, Inter Media Art Institute in Germany and Galerie Trabant, Austria. He is Professor of Electronic and Photographic Media at Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Public Programs

EXHIBITION OPENING of Van McElwee: Time Fork 
Sunday, October 11 / Noon – 3 p.m. / Tours at 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. / Free

All visitors are invited to explore "Time Fork" on their personal mobile devices, while practicing social distancing and following COVID-19 health and safety guidelines outlined by St. Louis County.

Participants in our limited-capacity artist-led tour will be able to check out an iPad in the Emerson Visitor Center or download the Time Fork app on their own mobile devices and take a personal tour with the artist. Tour is approximately one hour. Limit 9 persons per tour. Reservations required.

COFFEE & CONVERSATION: Van McElwee
Saturday, October 24 / 10 a.m. / Free

Attendees will be able to check out an iPad in the Emerson Visitor Center or download the Time Fork app on their own mobile devices and take a personal tour with the artist. Tour is approximately one hour. Limit 9 persons. Reservations required.

COFFEE & CONVERSATION: Van McElwee
Saturday, November 21 / 10 a.m. / Free

Attendees will be able to check out an iPad in the Emerson Visitor Center or download the Time Fork app on their own mobile devices and take a personal tour with the artist. Tour is approximately one hour. Limit 9 persons. Reservations required.

2020 Exhibitions are supported by Ellen and Durb Curlee, Alison and John Ferring, Jan and Ronnie Greenberg, Nancy and Ken Kranzberg, Joan and Mitchell Markow and Two Sister’s Foundation, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Mary Ann and Andy Srenco. 

Van McElwee: Time Fork is supported by the Windgate Foundation; the Whitaker Foundation; and Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.​