Anthony James

"My work is my best attempt at giving the impossible, the infinite, a physical, objective existence. The materials are merely an extension of the gesture. I start with the gesture and have spent decades distilling these concepts down to the essential. So whether I’m using vanguard, illustrious materials and high technology or centuries old metal techniques — my interest is in communicating the most direct way I can. There is a minimalistic simplicity to the work, yet it expresses something infinite — it’s a pluralistic paradox. I’ve tried to visually demonstrate the colossally vast and the infinitesimally small — the cosmos and the divinity inside oneself." -Anthony James, Aesthetica Magazine

"being a child in the 70’s and 80’s in england — there was a lot of chaos. you know how mother nature self corrects – adapts – heals? maybe I was drawn to formalism and minimalistic art because in many ways it is inverted chaos. maybe it’s my way of creating order." -Anthony James, Designboom

"My job as an artist is to make my work look effortless, but of course it’s not. The human eye only hits the mistakes. I will never let your eye hit on a mistake.”

"I’m interested in revealing and sharing truth. My intention is to bring an impossible concept like the idea of infinity, or the cosmos, into physical objective existence. I am attempting to express science, spirituality, and philosophy in an object the purest and most honest way I know how."

"you can’t really escape yourself. you’re always on the same thing. the artwork may present differently, but there is always an underlying signature theme. for me, everything is life / death / birth / rebirth somehow. it’s not an intention, but it all comes back to one source. burning a ferrari and stuff — it’s all instinctual. now I look back at it and ‘beautiful death’ is more of a concept than a sentence. it’s bizarre. you can’t escape your own destiny which is what the iliad is about." -Anthony James, Designboom

"They resemble a contradiction between like a Stanley Kubrick and Gustav Klimt. It’s Gustav Klimt mourning the way they’re lit, it’s this endless birch forest, but everything is in too much symmetry. You know, there’s something menacing there. What first appears to be beautiful is actually quite menacing in a Kubrick way." Interview

Morphic Fields was an exhibition of bronze and limestone pieces inspired by the scientist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance: “a process whereby self-organizing systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems.” Sheldrake describes his theory relative to the artistic process: “Every morphic fields starts with some creative step. Newton was the first person to think of the law of gravity. And before he’d thought of it, no one else had. Since then, millions of people have been able to think of it. So all morphic fields begin with individuals…Very few contemporary artists have the sense of inspiration from a transcendent source beyond the human realm. But I would argue that they are also drawing from the collective human experience. As much as there is room for individual creativity, every artist is also transcending collective memory. Artists can create new morphic fields. Yet, all art exists within a morphic field beyond the individual.” The sculptures are created from found materials and “through [James’] process of converting...waste into bronze they morph into something very beautiful and precious.”

A photorealistic series made of contradictory materials: Belgian linen, gesso, and Deltron. “Purity is an illusion. The timeless, cleansing rain evoked by James’ paintings is artificial. The viewer can encounter the work through a meditative fascination with its lucid intricacy – the eternal and universal behavior of water. And the aesthetic pleasure of this is intense. But to read it as only beautiful or mystical is to miss the logic of contradiction that gives the work its conceptual strength, the spray of toxic industrial paint onto an object recognizable to any old-master artist’s apprentice. Therefore, in a larger sense, this work presents an argument for combination and exchange over homogeneity and conformity. James’ new mode of painting can be read as a critique of easy simulation, of virtuality, in relation to both traditional illusionism and the digital. By layering contrasting material processes to create a seeming unity, a surface of streaming water, these works insist on the real over the hyperreal and on the assembled, heterogeneous, contested nature of that reality.”

Morphic Fields is the title of a series of twenty-one amorphous bronze sculptures with limestone bases— works created from cardboard boxes dipped in and shaped with wax and subsequently cast in bronze. This first monograph on Anthony James includes a number of offbeat essays on the artist’s work. Fashion and art critic Glenn O’Brien provided sharp-witted insights, and writer Christian Kracht added his typically sardonic commentary. An interview with controversial biologist Rupert Sheldrake was a highly fitting contribution; his theory of morphic fields inspired the artist’s work and the title of this publication. Other text contributions include a piece by: Matthias Mühling. The book was printed in Germany and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

Portals / Platonic Solids / Archimedean Solids, 2008-present

James gained international recognition in 2008 for his work Kalos Thanatos (KΘ), Greek for “beautiful death”, when he burned his Ferrari F335 Spyder in a birch forest, and then displayed it in a mirrored glass box with birch tree trunks. James was inspired by the ancient Greeks, who made sacrifices to Aphrodite in birch forests. Glenn O’Brien lauded James’ Kalos Thanatos by describing it as daring: “I miss art going out on a limb...Just a slim limb that looks like there’s at least some chance of it snapping...Anthony James burned his Ferrari and put it in a box, amid, actually, a bunch of limbs. That was going for it….this work is pretty gutsy...The car was a victim, a sacrifice old-school redux.”

James originally debuted The Birch Series in New York City in 2005. It consisted of several variously sized, vertical light boxes with young birch tree trunks inside. The sculpture series references the containment and simulation of nature. The works have mirrored sides, which give the illusion of an endless birch forest. The pieces are composed of birch trees, metal, glass, and fluorescent lights or LEDs. The birch tree is associated with magical symbolism. Glenn O’Brien wrote about birch trees that their “magic...is rooted in [the] special relationship with fly agaric mushrooms - that famed toadstool of the red cap and white spots - which is so often associated with elves and spirits...Many anthropologists consider it to be a possible agent of the transformation of human consciousness.” Of the series, James said, "I think about the containment of nature. The containment of our own nature. There’s something about the individuals journey that is really at the root of it. Going into the forest — not knowing what you’ll find — not knowing if you’ll ever return... You can see the metaphor."

Anthony James was born in England in 1974. He studied in London at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and graduated with a degree in fine art painting.