PLATFORM 27: Rachel Mica Weiss, The Wild Within is a newly commissioned work by Pittsburgh and Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Mica Weiss. An undulating slab of concrete poses atop a reflective steel plinth. Made specifically for deCordova’s Sculpture Park, The Wild Within, evokes the reclining female nude, a common motif in art history. Using industrial materials and monumental proportions, Weiss’s piece turns a symbol of objectification into one of balance, strength, and sculptural innovation.

PLATFORM is a series of one-person commissioned projects by early-and mid-career artists from New England, national, and international art communities that engage with deCordova’s unique landscape. The PLATFORM series lets artists expand their practice and visitors experience new approaches to contemporary sculpture.

Rachel Mica Weiss (b. 1986 in Rockville, Maryland) is based in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. She earned a BA in psychology from Oberlin College in 2008 and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2012, with additional studies at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME. Weiss has created public artworks for the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Airbnb, Seattle, WA; and The Pittsburgh International Airport, among other venues. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; Lux Art Institute, San Diego, CA; LMAK Gallery, New York, NY; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; and the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA.

PLATFORM 27 is generously funded in part by an Investing in Professional Artists grant from The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Opportunity Fund.

For PLATFORM 26, South Korean photographer Myoung Ho Lee adapts his one of his singular Tree photographs for a large-scale billboard set in deCordova’s verdant Sculpture Park. Traveling across South Korea and Mongolia, Lee searches for stunning, solitary trees to photograph. Once he finds the perfect subject, a production crew hoists a blank canvas behind the tree as Lee captures it with his large format camera. He later digitally erases the cranes, ropes, and assistants, leaving only traces of their existence in the final composition. Tree…#2 distills the natural beauty of Lee’s travels, while also revealing the performative nature of photography that is often concealed.

PLATFORM is a series of one-person commissioned projects by early-and mid-career artists from New England, national, and international art communities that engage with deCordova’s unique landscape. The PLATFORM series lets artists expand their practice and visitors experience new approaches to contemporary sculpture.

Lee was born 1975 in Daejon, South Korea. He earned his BFA in 2003, MFA in 2006, and PhD in 2008 from Joong-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea. His photography has been displayed in exhibitions globally, including at the Zaha Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY; and the Venice Biennale. His work is held in many collections such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hermes Collection, Paris, France; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Gyeonggi, South Korea. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography/Film at Kyung-Il University, Gyeongsan, South Korea.

Melman’s art explores processes of alchemy and transformation. An emergency room physician, he often takes as his subject the transitional moment between life and death or the boundary between inanimate and animate states of being. For his 2010 installation Central Governor at MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, he gilded the museum’s massive subterranean iron furnace over the course of a 168-day performance. He described the process as “re-skinning”–applying layers of gold leaf using his own saliva over all surfaces of the boiler as if to resurrect it as a sacred icon.

Similar activations of architecture are at play in his deCordova PLATFORM commission, Best Of All Possible Worlds. The piece consists of eight vacuum-molded casts of doors, arranged in the exact configuration of the artist’s Brooklyn apartment. The vacuum-cast process creates translucent replicas of the original doors in plastic. Traces of paint and small pieces of wood cling to the surface of some of the doors, suggesting their past lives and situating them between the material and immaterial, past and present.

In deCordova’s Sculpture Park viewers can walk through and around the doorways to experience the ghostly echoes of Melman’s lived space. By emphasizing thresholds between interior and exterior, the installation alludes to personal secrets and past experiences that linger in domestic spaces—making a serendipitous connection to deCordova’s own history as a former residence (the opulent home of founders Julian and Lizzie de Cordova). Melman sited the installation along an east-west axis to activate the doors with the maximum amount of light, particularly during sunrise and sunset.

For Turrets Tops, an original outdoor commission, Leeza Meksin created two life-sized replicas of deCordova’s iconic Museum building turrets in the Park. Draping these towering conical forms with vibrantly colored neoprene, Meksin combines textile patterns and ornamental architectural details to articulate connections between the fashions we use to cover our bodies and the dwellings we inhabit. The installation encourages visitors to recognize assumptions about clothing and gender, architecture and ornament that filter into our daily lives.

PLATFORM is a series of one-person commissioned projects by early- and mid-career artists from New England, national, and international art communities that engage with deCordova’s unique landscape. The PLATFORM series lets artists expand their practice and visitors experience new approaches to contemporary sculpture.

PLATFORM 25 was generously funded in part by the Coby Foundation and a Columbia University Provost Grant for Junior Faculty. Special thanks to Show Shop and Bent Productions for aiding with the design, fabrication and installation.