Press Release

 

Freight+Volume is pleased to present "The Last Library IV: Written in Water," an installation by Ward Shelley with Douglas Paulson, as well as 12 paintings by Shelley on view at Art Basel Meridians December 3 - 7, 2025.

 

The written word is a technology given credit for much of the movement in human history including, importantly, the rise of both democracy and of science.

 

The technology of the written word was probably the keystone in our attempts to build a just and fair society and has been an essential component of democracy in the modern era, establishing shared understandings and the firm ground on which to build durable institutions. Terms such as evidence, authority, and the rule of law are meaningless without the written word. Documents of written words are what give our society commonly held beliefs, aspirations, and expected outcomes. Written words establish facts.

 

Poised on the threshold of the Post Truth Era, The Last Library IV is a shambles of sequestered documents: banned books, stolen documents, state secret plans, Project 2025, the 1619 Project, WikiLeaks, books that were never written, books that were never read. It represents a confusion of points of view on the fate and veracity of the written word. It’s a holding pen, a detention center for the written word as it awaits deportation, as it is hustled off the stage of history.

 

Here, instruments of propaganda managing public consent and advertising are given equal footing with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Human Rights. What is our world, what does it mean, and who says?

 

Shelley creates an elaborate fiction of fake books and documents stored in a disorganized office archive. There are precarious stacks, crowded shelves and secret rooms stashed within illusions of scale and perspective. Intended to be an immersive experience, the provocations, references, and quips are found in every direction. Everything is handmade and mise-en-scene. Embedded and in the “back room” will be a collection of Shelley’s informational diagrams.

 

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Artist Biography

 

Ward Shelley maintains studios in Brooklyn, NY, as well as Connecticut and Florida. He specializes in large projects that freely mix sculpture, architecture, and performance. Utilizing eclectic influences and a variety of media, Shelley’s installations include eccentric functioning architectural pieces in which he lives and works during an exhibition monitored with live surveillance video equipment.

 

Shelley works with culture-related subjects in the Archive/Library series of immersive installations and his celebrated diagramatic timeline paintings, which cover diverse themes suchas the careers of artists working in de-materialized media and the history of art scenes. The best known of these are the Williamsburg Timeline Drawing and Downtown Body, published by Bomb Magazine.

 

He first exhibited as an artist in Miami. He earned his Masters degree from NYU and has been working and showing in New York since then. He moved his studio to Williamsburg in 1994 and began exhibiting internationally. 

 

Shelley has exhibited in more than a dozen countries. Pieces covered in the New York and national art press include the interactive video-environment “The Cube,” the legendary Mir 2 Project, and the Voyage Platform. In 2004 Shelley lived and worked inside the walls of Pierogi Gallery for 5 weeks for an exhibition called “We Have Mice.” Shelley also formed a collaborative artist group to realize the Flatland project at SculptureCenter in 2007.

 

Ward Shelley and collaborator Alex Schweder made and performed In Orbit, aka the artist hamster wheel, and ReActor, the spinning house in upstate New York.

 

Ward Shelley’s work is in a number of museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Art Museum, and The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Shelley received a painting and Sculpture award from the Joan Mitchell foundation, and has been a fellow of the American Academy in Rome since 2006. He has received NYFA and NEA fellowships in sculpture and new media categories, a Bessie Award for installation art, as well as private foundation grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

 

Before and during his art career he has also worked in advertising, construction, teaching, special events, theater, rock bands, and built a 37-foot sailing sloop.