James Davis Exhibition
Rare
This event has ended.
Rare presents Indian Summer, an installation of various sculptural works by James Davis.
Indian Summer references the metaphor of the late and sudden bloom of something unexpectedly, just as dry and hazy temperatures can fleetingly occur after a brutal frost. Davis' work demonstrates a similar phenomenon through the utilization of commonplace materials that are manufactured for one particular purpose but are manipulated in unforeseen ways to evoke the beauty of Nature.
Davis masters his materials to replicate that which cannot be man-made. In his hands, hardware store items such as fluorescent lights are transformed into soft-edged sunsets, casino dice into blazing infernos, and carpet fragments into desolate moons. Through his tongue-in-cheek reproductions, he allows us new and unexpected ways to appreciate Nature's bounty, while also revealing hidden beauties in low-grade, industrial-type products employed to mimic it.
By combining "hardware store science" with references to past artistic movements, Davis raises philosophical issues concerning the relationship between Man and Nature, particularly in terms of how humans define and perceive natural beauty. For example, using little more than fluorescent lights, color filters, and some tarps, Soft Sunset (2009-11) takes cues from the Luminists, the Hudson River School, Rothko, James Turrell, and Dan Flavin in its imitation of what we have come to expect of a perfect sunset.
101 (2010) touches upon the very concepts of creation and destruction by projecting a simulated fireball onto a wall by means of filtering light through scores of arranged casino dice, revealing that the line between these two polarities is indeed blurred. In this sculpture as in others, the artist's materials are "symbolic" to the work in that they are subtle expressions of its meaning.
[Image: James Davis "Soft Sunset" (2009-11) Heavy duty fiber-reinforced polyethylene tarps, fluorescent bulbs, polycarbonate light tubes,
poly-fil, metal pipe, blackball bungees 70 x 8 x 144 in.]
Media
Schedule
from May 26, 2011 to June 23, 2011