Joshua Challen Ice: Something to Do With My Hands

Experimental Gallery

Joshua Challen Ice creates sculpture, kinetic, and light-based installation art to explore ideas related to architecture and philosophy. Drawing on his background in lighting design and technology for the stage, he creates fully immersive works. In Something to Do With My Hands, Ice presents a new installation created for SOLOS 2025 that explores issues of care, maintenance, and creation. The installation takes the form of a “surreal construction site,” as the artist describes it, which has seemingly been abandoned by its maker. In the space, three frames represent different moments in a workspace where, it appears, a laborer was building a simple chair. On closer inspection, the components of the space, plans on the wall, and tools scattered around complicate this simple narrative, evoking questions about the nature of labor and the tension between fine art and more practical forms of craftsmanship.

Joshua Challen Ice
Born 1995, Monroeville, Pennsylvania
Based in Pittsburgh, PA

Joshua Challen Ice’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH), Carlow University Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA) and Gradient Project Space (Thomas, WV) and in group exhibitions at Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University, SPACE Gallery, and The Royal Danish Academy, among other venues. He has participated in artist residencies and fellowships in the United States and Europe and created numerous immersive public art installations throughout Pittsburgh. Ice graduated from Point Park University with a BFA in Lighting Design and Entertainment Technology.

Joshua Challen Ice: Something to Do With My Hands takes place as part of MoCA Arlington’s SOLOS 2025, part of the Museum’s long-running SOLOS exhibition program. Launched in 1988, SOLOS features solo exhibitions by artists based in the Mid-Atlantic region who are working at the forefront of contemporary art.

RELATED PROGRAMS

Art After Hours
Saturday / February 22 / 5pm-8pm

Artist Talks: Brandon Morse and Joshua Challen Ice
Saturday / March 22 / 3pm-5pm