Image: Yellowstone Art Museum, Philadelphia
The Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, will open ‘James Florio: Thirtysix Views of Inverted Portal’ on September 3, presenting a grid of photographs made across seven winters at Tippet Rise Art Center. The exhibition will remain on view in the museum’s Northwest Projects Gallery through January 9, 2027.
The project focuses on ‘Inverted Portal’, a 22-foot-tall sculpture designed by Ensamble Studio and installed on the grounds of Tippet Rise. At the art center, the structure operates as both a sculptural form and a shelter within the landscape. Florio’s photographs follow its changing appearance through snow, shifting light and severe weather, documenting the ways environmental conditions continually alter the work’s presence.
According to the museum, Florio returned to the site 482 times over seven winters, working with an 8-by-10 large-format camera. The resulting thirty-six images form an extended study of repetition, weather and attention rather than a single view of the sculpture. The photographs record the structure under different conditions of visibility and illumination, from snowy landscapes to darker, more difficult weather.
Florio describes the repeated journeys as developing from chance encounters into a sustained ritual. ‘The first few journeys were unintentional — I was drawn by the site’s magnetism,’ he says in the exhibition material. ‘Soon, however, it became a pilgrimage.’ He also writes that wind determined whether an image could be made, setting the pace of each visit and influencing the time spent at the site, the available light and the force of the weather surrounding the sculpture.
The exhibition forms part of the museum’s ‘One Artwork Gallery’ format, which encourages visitors to spend time with a focused presentation. One work identified in the museum’s materials is ‘Thirtysix Views of Inverted Portal, Image Seven, 2018–2026’, a pigment print on archival paper measuring 19 by 15.75 inches. That work is held in the permanent collection of Tippet Rise Art Center.
The opening program on Thursday, September 3, begins with a reception at 5 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., the museum will screen the 17-minute documentary ‘James Florio at Tippet Rise’, followed by a conversation between Florio and Lisa Ranllo, the Yellowstone Art Museum’s senior curator. The film was listed as an official selection of the 2024 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the 2024 MINT Film Festival.
A separate photography intensive with Florio is scheduled at the museum on October 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a listed cost of $45. The museum’s newsletter also announced a September 15 member visit to Florio’s studio in Roscoe, Montana, followed by lunch at River Arts & Books, a nonprofit literary-arts organization in the town. The Yellowstone Art Museum identifies itself as Montana’s contemporary art museum and is located at 401 North 27th Street in Billings.
