Fondation CAB Brussels is pleased to present its artist-in-residence Luke James (b. 1990, Dijon), who lives and works between Paris and Le Creusot.
Everything Begins Again and Again
By Clare Mary-Puyfouloux
Luke James is a sculptor. His work sometimes takes the form of assemblages made from found materials: manufactured objects, elements gathered from nature, building materials, even coins. His practice is also defined by precision and technical virtuosity. Often, his sculptures laugh. Tender, they bring things together.
A man loves a woman, who loves a man, who sees a bird pass by, tracing ripples across the sky above a field gently swept by the breeze. The bonds that connect us are a constant presence in his work: the reality of beings coexisting, tangible to one another, physical presences in their own right. Tangible, too, are intuitions images we shape as we struggle against the confines of words. As palpable as a poem.
Sometimes, his sculpture bears the imprint of a hand pressed into hot wax; at other times, it takes the form of a clean, smooth cut in wood, shaped in such a way that the labour is absorbed into the work rather than revealed.
Everything begins again and again.
To assemble, to unsettle, to share: these seem to be the central impulses of Luke James’s practice. A singular artist, he moves between a generous minimalism and a kind of conceptual magic. First brought to attention a few years ago through Révélations Emerige, his work has since forged its own path. He explores the tensions between the world and its games, between insolence and dread, becoming in the process the author of his own predation. A palpable sense of frugality emanates from Luke James, an energy that flows from his body into his work.