The Character and Shape 

of Illuminated Things

Amanda Ross-Ho at MCA

Los Angeles–based artist Amanda Ross-Ho’s first outdoor public art project, The Character and Shape of Illuminated Things, is currently up at the MCA as part of the museum's plaza project.

The title of the exhibition is adapted from the 1980 photography handbook How to Control and Use Photographic Lighting, which demonstrates how different lighting drastically affects how details appear in an image. Illustrating this section of the manual is a still life of three objects: a cube, a sphere, and a mannequin’s head. For her iteration of the MCA Chicago Plaza Project, Ross-Ho re-creates this trio at a monolithic scale with faithful allegiance to the original image. Completing the installation is a large-scale rendering of a color calibration card—the color grid that is used to maintain accuracy in the printing or post-production of color photography because it remains consistent in various lighting conditions.

The sculptures will remain up at MCA through November.

Click here to read more about the project and watch an interview with the artist and time lapsed installation process.