Anthony James “Fabulism ”

Fort Gansevoort

This event has ended.

Fort Gansevoort presents Fabulism, the first New York solo project in over a decade of British-born, Los Angeles-based artist
Anthony James. The exhibition will stage a selection of older works mounted in
dialogue with a new body of sculpture in an effort to reflect upon the dynamics
of continuity and change within the artist’s practice.

The exhibition title speaks to the artist’s interest in elevating ordinary materials through experimentation and transformation. Fabulism, the literary theory of magical realism—which renders the mundane fantastical—is a preoccupation of the artist. The exhibition is curated by Lauri Firstenberg in collaboration with there-there, a new Los Angeles based production company and exhibition space.

James debuts his new series of Shields, rendered in steel and bronze, which are highly worked surfaces through a laborious process of painting and additive gestures of refined and subtle metal work. James’s work operates
elusively, staggering between the iconic and the arbitrary, the concrete and the alchemic, the mythical and experiential.

The artist reveals, “the works evoke pictorial depictions of the cosmos, alluding to notions of mysticism, ethereality, and science fiction, all the while anchored through the use of weighty, industrial materials such as metal and neon.” The objects read as relics or artifacts from some liminal moment. As such, James attempts to locate beauty in the wake of insanity.

Anthony James (b.1974) is a British born, LA based multi-media artist. He studied at Central St. Martins School of Art and Design in London before moving to New York in 1998. His body of work is invested in minimalism, materiality, process, experimentation, alchemy, language, and the relationship between object making and questioning the universe. Though the work is informed by a personal, popular, and art historical archive, James aims at making work that is non-referential. The questions that emerge from this personal exploration focus on infinity, life, death, and rebirth.

James has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions at Patrick Painter in Los Angeles, Gavlak in West Palm Beach, Walter Storms Galerie in Munich, and Brand New Gallery in Milan, among others. James’ work can be seen in private and public collections across Europe and North America including the Seagram Building and General Electric Building in New York, as well as the Istanbul Modern Museum of Art. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.