Joshua Mosley (Acting Chair of MFA Program) in exhibition at the ICA, Philadelphia; Opening Jan. 15

Joshua Mosley: dread

Exhibition Dates: January 16 - March 29, 2009

ICA Winter Opening Reception: Thurs, Jan. 15 from 6-8pm

Joshua Mosley titled his most recent installation dread after photographer Eadweard Muybridge's motion study sequences of a dog named Dread. Made over a two-year period, Mosley's dread is composed of five bronze sculptures, and a six-minute, black-and-white, animated video that combines computer and stop-motion animation, as well as the artist's own music and dialogue.

dread is installed in two adjacent rooms. The first houses five, small bronze figures on pedestals spaced about the room. Enter the second room to see the film, projected large so as to evoke the scale of the environment the characters inhabit: a real world place created using sequenced still photographs. But unlike the real world, music notes replace ambient sounds. Composed by the artist, each character has its own "soundtrack." dread follows philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Blaise Pascal on something of a nature walk. They encounter flora and fauna, and engage in conversation about existence, God, and nature; in the end, they encounter Dread.

Joshua Mosley (b., Dallas, lives Philadelphia) is Associate Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his M.F.A. and B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mosley is a recipient of the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. His work has exhibited and screened at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Art Institute of Chicago, Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. In 2007 dread premiered to critical acclaim at the Venice Biennale.