page_title: Anthony James (artist)
section_title: Art
hierarchical_section_title: Anthony James (artist) / Art
caption_attribution_description: English: Rain Painting Anthony James
context_page_description: Anthony James is a British/American artist based in Los Angeles, known for his monumental and experiential sculptures and installations. His work gestures towards the theatricality of minimalism and formalism. There is a focus on materiality, alchemy, and a deep respect for light and space.
  "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." Aesthetica Magazine
context_section_description: Portals / Platonic Solids / Archimedean Solids, 2008-present
  
  Anthony James started with the Icosahedron - a shape that represents water. Water shifts, moves, flows ... it rages — relaxes. With remarkable flexibility it is gas, liquid, solid...visible to invisible in moments. Surely, water must be the conduit of the Aquarian world.  
  "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."
  The sculptures, made of stainless steel, glass, and LED lights, have shown internationally to great acclaim. 
  Repose, 2020
  The series consists of three Ferrari bodies: the 1957 250TR, 1962 250 GTO, and the 1967 P4. The sculptures are presented in archival quality bronze, aluminum, and copper. In their original incarnations, each of these Ferrari’s are exemplary automotive specimens -- the apex of power, form, function, and aesthetics. Yet, here they are memorialized in performative stillness – monumental memories of their own pasts.
  KΘ Kalos Thanatos, 2008 
  
  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.”
  "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."  Designboom
  The Birch Series, 2005-Present
  
  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.""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
  Bullet Series, 2011-Present
  “I first started making the Bullet Series in 2011. They are documented in my book, Morphic Fields, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag in 2014. The concept behind the series was to make a vis
caption: Rain Paintings, 2018 Anthony James
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