two-dimensional sculpture

Simon James loves colors: their luminosity, their diversity - but also their materiality. In Gesso he found the ideal working material for him and goes far back in art history: with this white mixture of plaster and glue, traditionally primed wooden panels and canvases in order to prepare them for oil painting. James turns this background of the pictures outside and mixes his color pigments directly into the primer.

He applies the colors brought into the gesso in a gestural-expressive manner of painting, distributes them in numerous layers on his large-format canvases, a physically intensive process. But the actual work only arises after he has put the brush down. Now James starts searching for the inner life of the picture. Like a sculptor, he works through the layers of paint with a grinding machine - from the outside back into the work. James calls it the search for the inner identity of the picture. He exposes his works in an almost archaeological process, he digs and grinds through the layers of paint as if they were earth ages, traces of memory, traces of life sunk to the bottom of consciousness. Exactly where the surface of the final work, its boundary with the outside world - that is, what we face as viewers - is only determined in this process, which is carried out with extreme precision.

James is interested in the interplay of deliberate settings as they occur in the painting process and the hidden life of the material, which is only revealed when the image is artistically investigated with the grinding machine. For him, painting and commercial work are inseparable in the process of becoming an image; the image holds surprises in store. As a result, his work is an interplay of the artist's work and the material's own life.

James' process of finding images is related to his interest in boundaries, which he examines when different materials and forms come together. The subject of boundaries permeates his abstract works, whether it is monochrome colored surfaces, elements rhythmically distributed over a level or landscape compositions in which he develops zones of transition that are worked out in great detail.

As a self-taught artist who has ruled out attending an art academy, James does not want to be associated with any art movement. While comparisons to the gestural painting of abstract expressionism are obvious, James himself has the greatest admiration for Claude Monet, with whom he has a love of color and the shimmer of his surfaces - even if, unlike Monet, James would never paint outdoors. He prefers to paint and grind in the studio, all for himself and in close interaction with his work.

Simon James was born in Northampton, England in 1967. 

Als ich aufwuchs, war ich immer fasziniert von den großen Werbetafeln, die am Straßenrand standen. Manchmal waren sie verwahrlost und Teile davon hingen herunter, waren halb abgerissen oder zeigten ältere Plakate. Die völlig willkürliche Gegenüberstellung von Bildern, die wenig miteinander zu tun hatten und um Aufmerksamkeit und Raum konkurrierten, blieb mir im Gedächtnis, bis ich viele Jahre später begann, eine neue Art der Malerei zu entwickeln. Ich hatte von der Decollage als Kunstform gehört, aber erst als ich begann, mit Gesso ein sehr altes Material zu verwenden, wurde mir klar, dass ich die Farbe als Medium mit demselben Effekt verwenden konnte, um Bilder übereinander zu schichten und dann durch Abschleifen zu reduzieren und vor meinem geistigen Auge ähnliche Farben, Linien und Formen wiederherzustellen, die ebenfalls um den Platz auf der Leinwand konkurrierten.

Ich arbeite mit einem Verfahren, das sowohl Malerei als auch bildhauerische Elemente kombiniert. Die Farbe wird in Schichten übereinander aufgetragen und dann durch Kratzen und Schleifen entfernt. Beim Abtragen der Farbschichten suche ich nach Juxtapositionen von Farbe und Form, die dem Werk in Kombination eine neue und individuelle Identität verleihen.

Meine Absicht ist es, den Betrachter in die Oberfläche hineinzuziehen und ihm die bildlichen Informationen zu geben, die es ihm ermöglichen, Assoziationen zu entwickeln, die aus tief liegenden Erfahrungen stammen, so wie das Werk entstanden ist.

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