James Hopkins
August 6th, 2010
British artist James Hopkins is a sculptor based in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. He graduated from Goldsmiths University, London in 2002. Hopkins slyly transforms everyday objects, imbuing them with the power of self-reflexive commentary, converting them into altogether different items, and nudging them towards an impossible state that produces an astonished incredulity in those who behold them. Hopkins’s sophisticated visual illusions are engaging, but his best works also hint at the epistemological uprooting that follows from the discovery that sight, our most relied-upon sense in the gallery, can be untrustworthy. Few contemporary artworks consciously remind us of this fact; Hopkins links it to an examination of his objects’ intrinsic characteristics, and occasionally, to a meditation on the emotional fallout of this and other fundamental instabilities.
Love Seat
The collapsing of visual space is representative in the sculpture titled ‘Love Seat’ in which I noticed that the shape of some chairs was similar to the alphabet. By removing certain sections from the chairs I discovered that I could reveal a message that commented on the possibilities of the chair’s function and interpretation. The word LOVE is the hidden meaning but we don’t see that initially because we choose to see what is first presented to the mind, in this case the formal quality of the chairs. ‘Love Seat’ comments on problems of perception in relation to different ways of looking, it creates an illusion of love whilst also portraying an undiscovered desire. The linear presentation of the chairs creates a narrative by offering a potential opportunity of a shared moment or sentimental meeting.
Wasted Youth
‘Wasted Youth’ consists of gathered accoutrements typically found in the teen-ager’s bedroom, which have been arranged on bookshelves. By cutting into and peeling back the elements from the surface of musical instruments, posters, skateboards and speakers to expose the image of an over-sized death’s head. These works are poetically succinct meditations on longed–for pasts and inevitable futures, the impermanence of objects and their persistence in memory. ‘Wasted Youth’ relies on tonal difference to outline the momento mori forcing the viewer to navigate a complicated interplay of positive and negative space.
Purple Haze
‘Purple Haze’ is a perspective sculpture of an electric guitar. It has been rendered in a specific manner in order to relate with expressing a visual interpretation of sound. The guitar sculpture has a monolithic quality, which could be read as commenting on megalomaniacal association to the power of the chord, whilst also referencing an optimum glamour saturation associated with fame and the spectacle of performance. The instrument’s discrepancy in size, aesthetic exaggeration and proportional twists allows the viewer to become aware of what is used in a functional and interactive way has become shifted to work in opposition to accommodating the body. ‘Purple Haze’ encourages the viewer to imagine their body engaging with the exaggerated form of the instrument.
Role Reversal
‘Role Reversal’ comprises of twisted fragments of acrylic plastic, which are specifically placed and shaped to form a representation of the Simpson family. The representation is only conceivable from one determined trajectory and from anywhere other than this isolated point the work appears abstract and incoherent. One of the reasons I chose to work with the Simpsons is that the medium of animation seems to comment on an elastic band reality. I am interested in how there is an affinity between the technique that I have adopted in manufacturing the sculpture (which is about visual alignment and the collapse of depth perception) and the subject matter, which is associated with disobeying the laws and logic of space and reason.
Rotated Room
‘Rotated Room’ comprises of a stereotypical office space, which has been optically compacted into the form of a spherical illusion. The sculpture, which has been made in relief, conveys strong ideas of distortion and momentum in relation to office natured business such as commerce, finance and politics. By adapting the architectural space of the office I am playing with concepts such as power and authority whilst translating these meanings to be awry and dizzyingly disorientated. The nature of the space depicted, being devoid of human activity and furnishings, references a strong sense of emptiness. In this context I associate emptiness with desertion or an employment, which may be no longer required which is of particular pertinence towards the recent collapse of many companies within the business sectors.
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