James K-M’s Art: Opening Tonight!

I’m really looking forward to the opening for James’ exhibition tonight.

There’s info here on the Baron site, as well as on James’ site, which features photos of the whole exhibition.

Return from Cuba

We have just returned from two months in Cuba, staying first in Camaguey for the majority of the time, with a final week in Havana.

It was a transformative and extraordinary time that I will be unfolding within myself for months to come. Right now I’m in the process of sorting out the photos and videos, and will post them soon. For now, here’s a chicken on the roof in Colon.

Until  I have more to post, I refer you to James’ site, where he shows the images from his remarkable exhibition of paintings in Camaguey, and the catalog of the show that is available for download. Find all that here: The Artist Magicians

Below is an image of the collaboration painting created by the artists for the exhibition: James K-M (Canada), Joel Jover Llenderrosos (Cuba), Osmany Soler Mena (Cuba)

Many Moons

Here’s one of James’ more recent paintings.

Many Moons by James K-M, 24" x 24", acrylic and stain on plywood

For more on his work, go to his artist site.

Inadvertent National Exposure

James K-M’s art got some inadvertent national exposure during the CTV coverage of the Canadian leadership debate last week. Students from SFU were gathered in the Teck Gallery space at Harbour Centre to give their feedback. Watch as the camera swings to the left: there are his paintings adding some flash and colour to the environment. To see more, go here to his site.

James K-M’s Upcoming Show

Image: Hearing Bone (detail), stain and acrylic on plywood, 24” x 24,” 2007

James K-M: Cave Paintings, September 2 – November 22, 2008.
Opening: Friday, September 5, 8 – 9 pm. Open daily during campus hours.

Please join us for the exhibition opening at the Teck Gallery, SFU Vancouver Campus, 515 West Hastings St, Vancouver, BC. The artist will be in attendance. Opening remarks at 8:30 pm.

Artist talk: Monday, September 15, 7pm
The artist will present a talk titled “Is There Anything Old Here?”
Room 1600, SFU Vancouver campus

Phone: 778-782-4266 Web: sfu.ca/gallery Email: gallery@sfu.ca

James K-M is a Vancouver-based painter who has, since 1983, created a vast series of hard-edge, optically charged works. These paintings reference primordial languages, the linkages between aural and visual phenomena, as well Op Art—a key historical avant-garde movement.
The question of how the social is contained within abstraction has been raised in many arenas over the twenty-five years since the first of these paintings were made. This exhibition addresses that societal role, while querying the rationales that continue to exist for new work in hard-edge abstraction. – Bill Jeffries, August, 2008

Publication: This exhibition is accompanied by a 24-page catalogue with essays by Eric McLuhan and Bill Jeffries.

Presentation of the Pillow

James K-M, Murakami Pillow, Andrew Jordan

Andrew Jordan just returned from New York where he saw the Murakami exhibition. Here he presents James K-M with a gift of a Murakami pillow. The energy is so exciting that the photo is blurring with enthusiasm! Side 2 of the pillow shows a smiling sleeping face, so the mood need not always be totally exuberant!

Mediaprobes

In the mid-90′s, James K-M and I worked on three interactive artworks called Mediaprobes. They’ve been viewed in various exhibitions world-wide. Below is their description and a still image from each. (Originally programmed in Director, they need to be redone in another format so they can be seen without being delivered on a disk.)
MediaProbes compress concepts together to form an entirely new type of
multimedia icon. The relationships between concepts from Marshall McLuhan,
Barrington Nevitt, James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis are juxtaposed with
experimental animated text and image along with narration and interactive
events.
MediaProbes reverse our normal concept of interactivity. Instead of the viewer
interacting with the presentation, MediaProbes present sensory interactivity,
sending complex signals back to the viewer, whose limited interaction by
mouseclick is rewarded by the “probeclick” sent back by the synaesthetic icon to
the brain.

Disparate ideas are forced into compressed interrelationship and much
like a chemical reaction they become fused in a new form of iconic expression.
Found images and sounds in the communication environment are combined with
intentional imagery and text selections in a very controlled setting. Working with
the minimum of input creates a reversal effect, which is formed by this forcing
together of ideas originally expressed in different media. The only appropriate
response for the viewer is a momentary internal synaesthetic shortcircuit, an
empty moment of “unlearning”.

MEDIAPROBE #1 (1.5 MIN.):
One quote from McLuhan is illustrated with appropriated audio and treated video. The flowing vertical text on one side of the main screen is one of ten thunders from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, which usher in a new development for humanity. The opposite vertical text is McLuhan/Nevitt’s analysis of the meaning of each thunder.

MEDIAPROBE #2 (2 MIN.):

The Artist is Older than the Fish, a quote from Wyndham Lewis, is placed over text from McLuhan, in which he describes the TV viewer as a skin diver. This fragmented text appears at intervals throughout the presentation, while video shot through a rear-view mirror is the central visual image. Audio involves three simultaneous tracks on the topic of out of body experience.

MEDIAPROBE #3 (7 MIN.):
A quote from Barrington Nevitt: “The perceptive artist learns how to repeat and
magnify his errors in order to create his own distinctive style for sharing new
truth”. Behind each chair is the image of an animal. Music is a treated midi-file
from the rhythm section for The Girl from Ipanema, and carries on throughout the piece. The blue buttons, when clicked, reveal quicktime sequences of futurist
narrative by Carol Sill or sound poems by James K-M.

(Download a free pdf excerpt from my book Documentary Print. Click on the title to receive the entire SRF Interim Report Document on Living in the Future.)

(Link here for a random post from my blog.)

Cave Paintings at Kootenay Gallery and More

James K-M’s Cave Paintings exhibition opened at the Kootenay Gallery last weekend, and we travelled there with Andrew Jordan for the show. Marilyn James, spokesperson of the Siniixt people opened the exhibition. Also opening that same evening was Joanne Circle’s show in the other room of the gallery.

James K-M, Marilyn James, Joanne Circle, Andrew Jordan

After the opening we went out for dinner but the only place open after 9 pm in Castlegar is Boston Pizza. It became the site of our great mind-blowing symposium discussion on art, with James, me, Andrew, Joanne, and her friend, Maggie.

Flamingo Motel in Castlegar

Andrew, James and I stayed at the Flamingo Motel in Castlegar, which featured handmade quilts, a funky gazebo wired for sound, and apple trees.

James shows covers of the 500 albums in the gazebo, as we listen to Midnight Cowboy. Note albums on the floor, speakers on the ceiling and turntable just behind James on the right.

 

Andrew picks an apple from the Flamingo’s trees.

It wasn’t far to go up to Nelson and over to Ainsworth Hot Springs. In Nelson we visited Margrith Schraner and Ernest Hekkanen, both writers and publishers of the well-regarded New Orphic Review. Their home is also the New Orphic Gallery, and their front lawn may be a site of the “controversial” bronze monument to Vietnam-era war resisters. After wonderful dinner, wide-ranging conversation (or is it wild-ranging conversation?) and a good night’s sleep, we left the next morning for Vancouver – laden with dusky plums and perfumed grapes from their trees and vines.

Margrith Schraner and Ernest Hekkanen talk with James in the gallery

(Link here for a random post from my blog.)

 

Digitalis Digital Art Returns (but not really)

So glad to see that the DDAS material has been rebuilt and posted – if nothing else just to have a record of the international exhibitions that were put up over the past 5 years of the society’s operations.

From Digitalis 5, BCDL by Francesco Schiavon and Tris by James K-M

In the Spiritual in Digital Art show (Feb -March 2003), one component didn’t make it to this archive site. It was a web radio broadcast we did including music from submissions worldwide, programmed to self-run for the duration of the exhibition. At the same time, audio interviews with the artists were in rotation along with the music, so it made for a very complete presentation. I did the interviews, and Francesco programmed the radio. We also had text interviews by email, which were posted along with the exhibition on the DDAS site. At any rate, you can go here to see the archive.

(Surprise: Link here to see a random post from my blog.)

James’ Upcoming Exhibition

 Looking forward to going to the Kootenays for the opening of James’ exhibition of new paintings. Here’s the invitation:

You can see the paintings here, on his site, and here’s a link to the Kootenay Gallery for more on the show.

(Surprise: Link here to see a random post from my blog.)