At James Lewis’s solo show Living Stone, yellow light envelops the Pech space like heavy, hot summer air, evoking a sense of unease. In the basement-like room, two parallel walls of stacked wooden cabinets stretch up to the ceiling, forming the eponymous central installation of „Living Stone“ (2024). As architectural elements, they shape a passage with a flickering image inside. Yet, the video remains unreachable, as the passageway appears too narrow to cross, acting more as an obstacle than a path.
While yellow is disorienting, it also reveals details, such as the finger marks on one of the cabinets, which might allude to its origin. The objects, sourced from a second-hand shop and likely abandoned as defective or unwanted, are now arranged in the space, exposing a side usually hidden from view—their shabby backs, marked with stamps and numbers on their unified surfaces. Serving as the only form of identification, these markings allude to the cabinets‘ utilitarian function. Yet, with their doors inverted in the passage, unable to be opened, the objects lose their original purpose. Leaving only numbers as traces of their former identities. By liberating the cabinets from their initial role within a new system, Lewis challenges the rigidity of categorization and the imposed functions meant to provide structure and order—and thus, comfort.
Similarly, statistics serve as a simplified means of describing social and political complexities. As Sabrina Tarasoff notes in the excerpt from the essay accompanying the exhibition, we attempt to measure and count everything.1 Here, Lewis juxtaposes the action of making a tower of aluminum biscuits with the 174 seconds inscribed on the enlarged aluminum coin The Age of Decanting (Biscuit Tower), 2023, hanging on the wall. Creating dissonance between the mundane action and the statistical fact, Lewis undermines statistical precision, pushing it to the point of absurdity in the exhibition text:
“Masturbating 6177600 seconds
Watching TV 289749600 seconds
Cleaning 46425600 seconds […]”2
The instability of statistical rigidity is reflected in the oxidized surface of the aluminum coin, dissolving the data into the flux of dry branches and leaves embedded within it. The impermanence inherent in nature, permeating the coin, unfolds in the video enclosed within the wooden construction, subtly resisting structure from within as it shows the constant water flow. Positioned to be mirrored in the glass surface of the opposite closet door, reflection invites us to read the random, ever-changing words unconventionally—through the looking glass— transforming them into mere signs devoid of meaning.
In Lewis’s works, discomfort, contradiction, and impermanence of life serve as quiet resistance within rigid categorizations and norms constructed by society. As the exhibition’s title suggests, ‚Living Stone‘ may refer to a succulent plant that camouflages itself as a stone to survive in a harsh environment.
Exhibition: James Lewis – Living Stone
Exhibition duration: November 28, 2024 – January 11, 2025
Address and contact:
Pech
Große Neugasse 44/2, 1040 Vienna
www.pech.is
James Lewis – www.jameslewisjameslewis.com
