Jim Lambie

Jim Lambie's objects and installations playfully find high-modernist forms in junk from the 1960s and '70s, the very era when "modern" became a truly mass-culture aesthetic. In his floor installation Zobop, black duct tape forms a monochrome abstraction on the floor, its pattern determined by the specific peculiarities of the gallery's architecture. Within this field, Lambie includes a series of sculptures, each of which cleverly transforms found objects into elegant abstractions. Made of chair backs, old handbags, and pieces of mirror, The Jesus and Mary Chain recalls both a plaza and the bedazzled inhabitants who might stroll there. Hanging high above, Sunbed (Tan Tropez) glows like an artificial sun; and leaning against the far wall, the Psychedelic Soul Stick playfully lauds the symbolic power of found abstraction. This unobtrusive work made from a branch wrapped with hundreds of layers of shredded record albums, photos, colored ribbons, and thread is part of a larger series in which bits collected from favorite recordings, significant photos, or beloved sweaters are transformed into a shamanistic object that possesses the combined symbolic powers of all the objects from which it is made.

Selected Bibliography:

Days Like These: The Tate Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Exhibition catalogue. London: Tate Britain, 2003, 100–105.

Early One Morning. Exhibition catalogue. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2002, 108–20.

Higgs, Matthew. Seven Wonders of the World. London: Bookworks, 1999.

Male Stripper. Exhibition catalogue. Oxfordshire, England: Modern Art Oxford, 2003.

Zobop. Exhibition catalogue. Glasgow: Transmission Gallery/Showroom Gallery, 1999.

Links:

The Moore Space

Whitechapel