Berkshire, Reese and Paul Galleries

Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark

June 15 – August 31, 2022

View the virtual tour

For more than thirty years artist James O. Clark has been inspired by properties of light and the creation of experimental sculptures that uses it as a medium. Clark's innovative approach to light frequently employs non-traditional art materials such as balloons, neon, car parts, bubble and fog machines, water, helium, fluorescent lights, fiber-optic cables and electroluminescent wire, and live chickens to create his work. When speaking about the connection between luminosity and his art, Clark has observed that "In my creative adventure, I am captivated with the magic of light's dialogue with form. Light takes a mysterious journey when it's illuminating, composing, defining, reflecting, refracting, bending, teasing the volume and mass. Light has a poetic conversation with materials that creates a meaningful symbiotic relationship."

The twenty-three works on view at Herron were created between 1993 and 2000, and purposefully reflect the range and scope of Clark's sculptural light-based investigations. Experimentation is a hallmark of Clark's practice and can be seen in each of these objects, including an additional work, a print that was created with the help of a live chicken. A companion video of this avian, barnyard animal hunting and pecking at chicken feed scattered across a copper plate that was the source of the print, is also featured within the exhibition.

Jonathan D. Lippincott, in his catalogue essay that accompanies the exhibition notes that "Clark's works are illuminating in every sense of the word. His sculptures create environments; the light of each work interacts with whole space, the other sculptures, and with you, the viewer. As you're looking, you can become more attuned to your own experience of seeing. Observe the colors that appear when, for instance, green light meets a white wall, or a red shirt, or a blue knapsack; the colors that reflect off a nearby work, shining on metal or plastic or balloons. This act of discovery can only happen with time, and it's a physical as well as mental experience. As you move around the work, looking at it from different angles, the light is in constant interaction with every object and every surface around it. The sculptures await your participation."

ABOUT THE ARTIST

James O. Clark graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1974 from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. Since 1978, Clark has participated in a variety of solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Morris Museum, New Jersey; Sideshow Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; and the New Museum, Studio 18 Gallery, and the Islip Art Museum, all in New York; among others. The artist has also received numerous awards and honorariums, twice from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and twice from the National Endowment of the Arts. Clark served as a fellow for the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and twice secured a grant with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He is a member of the American Abstract Artists and was nominated for Who's Who in America in 2004 by Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum. Clark lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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