Joshua Abarbanel

In October 2015 Joshua Abarbanel participated in The Arctic Circle, an expeditionary artists residency aboard a Barquentine Tall Ship. With twenty-five other artists and a small crew, he sailed for more than two weeks around the international archipelago of Svalbard—ten degrees south of the North Pole—to experience this unparalleled region, do research for future artistic endeavors, and make art in situ. Prior to the trip Abarbanel created a small mold of a model Norwegian rowboat to be cast in ice and launched in the Arctic waters where it would eventually melt and become the very element on which it floats. Working with ice as a medium in the Arctic invokes ideas of ephemerality, temporality, impermanence, and the fragility of the natural environment. He launched several ice boats into the sea at various locations among the fjords of Svalbard and documented them via photographs and video, which are currently on display now through December 16, 2016 at the Los Angeles Harbor College Fine Art Gallery in the exhibition Joshua Abarbanel: Finding North. The exhibition also includes recent sculptures, including a new iteration of an ice boat, Pebble Boat, which is cast in ice and pebbles and melted on site during the opening. During this melt Abarbanel captured audio of the pebbles dropping onto their metal platform, and that soundtrack continues to play in the gallery.