GALLERY
James Case at Road Agent
by David Michael Perez
“Any sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic.”
– Arthur C. Clarke
Road Agent is pleased to announce Haven for the Dispossessed, the debut solo exhibition of New York-based artist James Case. A reception for the artist will be held at the gallery on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 from 6 to 9 pm.
Earth is already in space. The twin forces of science and capitalism—one spurring on the other—have their origin and future in the outer cosmos. James Case’s new body of work is a meditation upon this notion; he takes the astrological and technological and reveals them as one fold of the same cosmic fabric. This exhibition of sculpture, drawing, and installation emerges from the deeply poetic narrative between metaphysical alchemy and capitalist symbolism. Drawing from sources of military weaponry, astrology, corporate logos, NASA and the occult, we experience a romantic realism that engenders a new visual myth-science.
In the main gallery space, Case’s large graphite drawings are as iconic as they are ephemeral. In each, corporate automotive symbols (Ferrari, Jaguar, Dodge Ram, et al.) are dramatically yet intricately hand drawn, and melt gently into the starry cosmos. This unexpected pairing finds modern technology’s ever-present modes of transportation in the outer constellations. Rather than static icons, the symbols are placed within a history of metaphysical longing and imagination.
Throughout the gallery, sculptural installations merge astrological star charts, missiles, linguistic chaos, and alchemy into a grand myth-illogical landscape. James Case’s own star chart acts as physical map of one’s place in time and space and, like a space center’s calculations, a martial trajectory into the future. In this milieu, individuality emerges not from within but from the far reaches of a common universal space. All the work in the exhibition finds a spiritual force immanent within materiality itself; what is quite simply an irreducible magic. And as theorist Kodwo Eshun notes, “magic is just another name for the future, an as yet unknown medium.”
Born in Dallas in 1978, James Case received his BFA from the University of North Texas in Denton. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has most recently exhibited at Buia Gallery and Cynthia Broan Gallery in New York and Ben Dixen in Copenhagen.
JAMES CASE Bio
opening reception photos
INFO @ ROAD-AGENT . COM
214 749 4049