Forthcoming Exhibition
In Extremis: where landscape meets abstraction
This latest exhibition from Simon James takes its inspiration from the English countryside and can be broadly described as landscape art, but these are not your typical pastoral scenes. Instead, the fields, hills and hedgerows are viewed through a distinctly contemporary lens, interpreted and abstracted into eery close-ups in a sombre monochrome or pared back into iridescent planes of colour, shape and texture
The works take liberties with scale and perspective. Seed husks loom larger than life in one gallery space, while in another whole countryside vistas collapse into hazy bands radiating impressionistic colour. Elsewhere, the rugged soil surface over a crop cycle is evoked in broad strokes and layered paint in a set of minimalist wall panels.
Boundaries between accepted genres are deliberately and sometimes literally blurred in a show that brings together paintings, drawings and photographic works under a common theme of the natural world in an accelerating state of flux. The ideas flow fluidly between media. Digital images in pigment ink on art paper start to resemble watercolours or Asian ink paintings, while drawings become painterly through the luminescent effects of charcoal. Other images are scaled up into composite works or delivered over multiple panels, taking on sculptural properties within the gallery space.
The work is very much of the moment, referencing the potentially precarious state of the natural world under environmental stress. But the exhibition expressly avoids the polemical, aiming primarily for sensory impact and simple pleasure. Art, like nature, may provide both a refuge and a reawakening, according to the artist. “In a world full of dark realities, I like to think there is a place for a pure aesthetic offering stimulation or solace,” he said.
