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Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, Still from The Wind, 2024. Courtesy the artists.

Wind is an invisible force. Scientifically, it is the movement of air in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by differences in pressure influenced by factors such as the sun, the rotation of the planet, and topography. Known bodily by every human everywhere, wind affects various aspects of life despite only being visible through its interaction with the environment.

On Air is an exhibition of new work which expands Clayton & Lewis’ interest in working with weather as both a material and a process. It was developed in conversation with A Sudden Gust of Wind, a newly commissioned public artwork by the same artists featuring two hundred kite sculptures installed in trees throughout Downtown Pittsburgh. With a focus on harnessing and visualizing the movement of indoor air currents, the works in On Air take varied forms, such as an expanse of billowing curtains viewable from the street, an air activated tabletop sculpture, an intervention with the AC ductwork to detect the presence/absence of air currents and an anemometer sculpture that measures the gallery windspeed, and a Radio/TV “On Air” warning sign modified to flicker uncertainly.

The rear portion of the gallery features a new long-form film depicting a collage of over 1,000 clips from films that feature wind. As a narrative device in filmmaking, footage of wind is regularly used to foreshadow imminent, often ominous change, and provide an emotional or temporal cut. In the production of this media, wind may be artificially created by off-camera fans, sought-after as a natural characteristic of an environment, or simply captured incidentally. It is never the subject but is omnipresent as a b-list presence in every movie. Clayton & Lewis meticulously sequenced their amassed clips of wind in increasing intensity according to the Beaufort Wind Scale. The final film becomes a meditation on the in-between moments of life, in which the invisible forces that carry us take center stage.

Lenka Clayton is an interdisciplinary artist whose work exaggerates and alters the accepted rules of everyday life, extending the familiar into the realms of the poetic and absurd. Recent exhibitions include Rising Sun (2023) at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Day Jobs (2023) at the Blanton Museum of Art, To Begin Again (2022) at ICA Boston, The Carnegie International 57th Ed. (2018), Object Temporarily Removed (2017) at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Apollo’s Muse (2019) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art NY, and The Grand Illusion, at the Lyon Biennial, France (2020). In 2017 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum commissioned a major new work by Clayton and collaborator Jon Rubin, entitled A talking parrot, a high school drama class, a Punjabi TV show, the oldest song in the world, a museum artwork, and a congregation’s call to action circle through New York. With the participation of six diverse venues around New York City, the artists arranged for an essential element from each site—referenced in the project’s title—to circulate from one place to the next, creating a six-month network of social and material exchange.

Clayton’s work has been supported by The Warhol Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. She has received an Art Matters Award, a Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement, and a Creative Development Grant from Heinz/Pittsburgh Foundation. She has been artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, PA and Headlands Center for the Arts, CA and was a Sabrina Merage Fellow with Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum. Clayton’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, SFMoMA in California, Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in Massachusetts, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. Permanent public artworks include Darkhouse Lighthouse, and Historic Site, both made with collaborator and husband Phillip Andrew Lewis. Her work is represented by Caharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

Phillip Andrew Lewis (b.1973, lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an interdisciplinary artist who works in a variety of media including photography, video objects, and sound. His creative research often responds to historical events, psychology, and phenomenology. This work consistently examines duration, perceptual limits and attentive observation. Lewis is actively involved in collaboration with artists and various groups.

Phillip has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. He received a 2012 Creative Capital Grant in Visual Art for his ongoing long-term project entitled SYNONYM. He has also received generous support for his research from Black Cube, Headlands Center for the Arts, Culture and Animals Foundation, Center for Creative Photography, Foundation for Contemporary Art in New York, Fathomers, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Midway Contemporary Arts Fund, Tennessee Arts Commission, University of Tennessee, Urban Arts Commission, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Sabrina Merage Foundation. He is a tenured full professor at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In collaboration with his wife, Lenka Clayton, he runs a project space in Pittsburgh called Gallery Closed which is open 24/7 via two street facing windows.

On Air: Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis is organized and presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.