JAMES BOURBON
PHYSICAL REALITY
31.03.2023 ~ 16.04.2023
As a child, the aisles of the local video store contained endless opportunities and an overwhelming sense of discovery. Physical Reality is an homage to those childhood days and the possibilities of encounter promised by the physical world. Borrowing from the horror section, my works replicate twisted faces and otherworldly phrases in advertising capslock and haunting typography. There’s a curious tension between the repellent visuals and the enticing tactility of these works, crystalised in my tufted rugs. Equally, their visual language and the silk banner forms of forgotten secret societies point to another era, while in the gallery, their larger-than- life scale takes on the unmissable, unavoidable, everywhere-ness of contemporary advertising. There’s a visceral possibility at play here, that moves past an understanding of artworks as objects we look at to objects that provoke physical, embodied, affective encounters. In prompting this intensity of feeling, this celebration of aliveness, Physical Reality revels in the possibilities of panpsychism, otherwise articulated by new materialism, that everything is alive.
- James Bourbon
