As we know, the reading of the relationship between humans, objects, and environment, and so the meaning we give to it, largely depends on the point of observation. So, first of all, I’d like to start with asking how you yourself ‘read’ these works you are presenting. Can you step outside these works for a moment, and let me know what you see?

I try not to read my own work until I can do so from a great distance. Time necessarily passes for this to occur. In general, the allegorical aggregates and figurations are constructed through a process of excavation that is equal parts eavesdropping as digging—eavesdropping on fleeting moments in the world at large, digging towards a furthered re-encounter. 

I know you have often expressed a specific interest, in particular, in exploring this liminal condition, the border between elements “where the inside and the outside collapse” as – you said – “ it is synaptic (joint, concatenation)”.  We know that everything is somehow interconnected, and as humanity, we are just a little particle of a broader universal system. Can we read these works as some kind of scientifically rigorous micro models of larger macrosystems? How do you feel they relate to a broader whole? 

A material intervention within a constructed or artificial environment is more emotional than scientific—pressing upon personal frames of reference and excluding the IRL real world through a selective interplay of material agency and fantasy. In this version of events that could be consumed, discarded, sent to rot, is left alone, suspended, there is no fear of loss. What happens when things are let go of? When letting go is supported by the physical properties and agencies of the material itself—Material or substances which are already known via language, necessity, desire? Do we already know the outcome? 

I know that installing is a key moment of your practice as your approach to sculpture is inherently site-specific and rooted in the way the elements interact with each other, and with the environment. These relations are also what often activates specific processes and reactions, that explore the “unknown futurity” embedded in these forms and allow some silent forces and hidden energies present in the space to manifest. At the center, I feel, there are all the potentialities lying in the between material presence/material process, which, however, in your most recent show you had enriched also with some more allegorical impulse and specific narrative. 

Can you walk us through your artistic process? Did you get any particular source of inspiration for these works — or did they arrive just in relation to the nature of the thought, material, location (either physical, psychological, or situational) you were positioned in at the time of making them?

A consistent motif across these works is carried by the recurring presence of the bronze cast match, an analog of a lit match not yet burnt out. The lit match with a suspended flame recalls a long-held fascination with that which burns but is not consumed, whether existentially, philosophically or practically (as in the case of our quest for renewable resources). The contagion of lit matches—which are not yet completely consumed by the fire’s flame—mirrors both the threat and vitality of a spreading idea. Historically, the discovery of fire and the development of methods to control and tend to it was a propulsive one, a pivotal moment for early humans enabling our move into both magic and technology. This interest in the symbolic potential of a match was piqued while welding in the studio. The fluorescent lights in my studio were competing with the brightness of the match’s flame while trying to light the welding torch. Consequently, I could not always see the burning match’s flame. For safety reasons I had to proceed as if the flame was lit. This assumption began to intrigue me. I began to think about the idea of thousands of small but potentially interconnected fires. What could be illuminated, carried, or further set to fire by these subliminal flames? I began to think of the match as an invisible agent of change. 

The world of objects often extends its materiality to some social and political implications embedded in it. No material is inert: they can always react both physically, but also conceptually, and narratively, with the context, in particular in terms of stories they bring with them, and relations of power they represent. 

Some critics have described your works also in terms of  “political geology”, and they often have a disquieting post-human or dystopic character.  Do you feel that the choice of materials and elements in your work intentionally carries also some political stance? Are you, for instance, aiming to address some ecological concerns or provide any critical commentary on the role of humankind in transforming the surrounding? 

Yes, certainly, and of equal issue are my personal politics of disclosure. If I announce every belief, or thought, or intention, connected to my work, does the determining-presence of my voice and use of language prematurely foreclose the possible outcomes or readings that these works may potentially elicit?

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James Lewis