Jim Shrosbree: Zero Distance

June 11 - September 18, 2005 Free Admission

We usually, and quite reasonably, expect visual art to involve us in an encounter with something that is seen. But James Shrosbree’s art initiates an unexpected visual experience: we become aware of what we cannot see. His small, at times winsome, but always intensely focused artworks are an invitation for the viewer to enter the play between the seen and the unseen. The timelessness of the self-contained object and our transitory temporality intersect in this encounter.

The pieces embody a visual language, which deliberately initiates and engages the viewer’s response. They not only anticipate our act of vision but, once arresting it, they become forces influencing our physical interactions as we investigate and interpret. Each piece catalyzes a choreography of examination, which it stages, almost like a score, through its formal qualities, its overt surface markings, and its installation.

But this is not a metaphysics; it is more an understanding of relational processes –an archeology of vision. Through our relationship with these curious and carefully orchestrated objects we gain a double vision: awareness of artforms that are fully present; and the understanding that we can only see a part, and even then, only slowly over time.
–Lenore Metrick-Chen