The Prismatics
April 19, 2007- May 26, 2007
532 W 20th St
Jim LambieInstallation View, Anton Kern Gallery (2007) | |
Jim Lambie’s forth solo-exhibition at
Anton Kern Gallery consists of five modified wall
tapestries, an assemblage-like floor sculpture and a
video.
On a closer look, however, and while submitting to the
artist’s premise proposed in the exhibition title The
Prismatics, the viewer enters a space of optics and sound
filled with white noise, black light and the heavy atmosphere of the marvelous.
The gallery space has become the prism through which the exhibited objects are broken up and
bounced around like the spectral colors formed by the refraction of light. Persian rugs, punctured,
densely collaged and mounted onto aluminum, suggest a familiar kind of exoticism, and the term
The Prismatics seems to expand from the field of optics into that of music, to be precise, implying
the name of a garage rock band. Since being introduced to the West in the 17th and 18th centuries,
ancient Asian wall and floor coverings have always inspired the Western imagination, instantly
turning the once coveted, now ubiquitous rugs into an object for the projection of desire and
oblivion. In this conflation of optics, sound and Orientalism, the rugs, the musical sculpture and the
video of flickering light in the dark act like magical objects (flying carpets perhaps?). They create an
environment that suggests the possibilities of change. This is
Jim Lambie’s way of shaping
knowledge through the use of common objects and the fabrication of particulars.
Lambie’s work has recently been presented in one-person shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2006) and the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2005). His work
has also been included in group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London (2006), the Albright
Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2005), and the 5th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art,
Pittsburgh (2004), and will be featured in a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago later this year. In 2005, Lambie was nominated for the Turner Prize by the Tate Britain.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | map | | Gallery | Anton Kern Gallery | | Address | 532 W 20th St New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States | | Phone | 212-367-9663 | | Fax | 212-367-8135 | | Hours | Tue-Sat 10-6 | |
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