OtherWorldly-MADMuseum NY

Êxhibition presented at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City, 2011. The show explored the varied approaches to the diorama as a contemporary art form, featuring artists from around the globe who created dioramas as free-standing sculptures, subjects for photographs, and the basis for animated videos. The 38 artists involved brought an intense engagement with diverse materials and a meticulous attention to detail, producing elaborate environments that felt at once familiar and foreign. The exhibition illuminated a remarkable renaissance of interest among artists worldwide in constructing small-scale, hand-built depictions of artificial environments and alternative realities, presented either as sculpture or as subjects for photography and video. Notable participants included Charles Simonds, who created a site-specific installation in MAD's lobby, alongside Joe Fig, Thomas Doyle, Gregory Euclide, and David Opdyke, among many others. A defining feature of the show was its commitment to analog craftsmanship — none of the photographic images were digitally altered, with artists instead constructing their miniature worlds and capturing them using manual camera and lighting techniques.