Meredith James’ videos and sculptures engage architectural space and sequential narrative through a series of inversions and perceptual events. Shot in an abandoned subway station, Six uses simple in-camera techniques to recast the spatial and temporal coordinates of the experience of a passing train. Not unlike early experiments in film, James’ work tends to lay bare its mechanism, preferring to acknowledge the perceptual shifts even as they occur. Carefully structured time lags are distributed between moments of recognition within the narrative structure of a video or the spatial arrangement of sculptural elements.
James’ use of unconventional viewing apparatuses compounds the experience; videos are rear-projected inside homemade TVs and sculptures sit behind walls. See-Through is a tubular knot constructed of found windows, which are fit together, and then built into a temporary wall. As in her videos, James reveals the structure of the piece by creating alternate vantage points and entries into the work. The diorama titled “A stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled” may be seen either through a tiny peephole or through the prism of windows in See-Through.
Born in 1982, James lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Yale University, and her BA from Harvard University. Recent group exhibitions include Symbol Rush, Newman Popiashvili, New York; Experiment, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kings County Biennial (curated by Kidd Yellin and James Fuentes), Kid Yellin, New York; People Weekly (curated by Linda Norden), The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York; Careerists and Visionaries (curated by Jacques Louis Vidal), Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York; and Labyrinthitis, Rivington Arms, New York.
www.marcjancou.com
