James Carl: Maintenance

April 14 through to May 16, 2020

James at the Art Metropole in 2000.

Excerpt From An Online Conversation with James Carl and Yves Trépanier

You are known as a sculptor, one with a subversive tendency both because of the non- traditional, common- place materials you use like cardboard, venetian blind slats, plastic bottles and, sculpey, but also because of your interest in the everyday, and the common place. Things like bleach and antifreeze bottles, inner tubes and elastic bands that you transform into beautiful objects and imbue with a sense of importance and gravity. Your work is filed with irony, social commentary and Pop. The same sensibility seems to exist with the graphic work that you’ve been making simultaneous to your practice as a sculptor. What draws you to making prints and drawings, and what is your interest in using computer technology to make them?

First up, “social commentary”: I’m not interested in commentary, I’m a participant—I make things that are as useless to the universe as any plastic water bottle.

Next: sculptors make the best drawings. I love LeWitt’s drawings—totally informed by sculpture; Rabinowitch, Sandback, Truit, Gober. Giacometti is so weird for so many reasons, not least of all because he moves between sculpture to painting—very unusual. Sandra Meigs is pretty good at that—but she’s obviously unusual too. Bourgeois! Oldenburg! Christo! Liam Gillick draws beautifully with letterforms. Derek Sullivan is making fantastic drawings these days, but we all know he’s a sculptor.

I taught myself the how-to of vector-based drawing in the 1990’s when MacDraw, Freehand, Illustrator, and Corel Draw, were vying for market control of the Bezier curve tools. Not difficult. Super versatile.

At that time I was living in a shoebox in mid-town Manhattan, amidst a hoarder friend’s mountains of street salvage. The place housed a museological collection of American bottled product. That was where the content drawings started. I was between studios and Lauren Ewing, my boss, loaned me the laptop in the evenings. I was looking at all that material, and learning how to draw it, one bottle at a time, on a Macintosh PowerBook. I still add to that compendium of bottles.

The basic computer drawing tools attracted me for a few simple reasons—the quality of the line, the portability of the tools and the apparently infinite possibilities for output. I remember seeing a fat matte black line spit from a laser printer at Kinkos and thinking how unknown and beautiful it was. The uniformity!

Sign makers were among the early adapters to this technology and, in Lauren’s studio, we were working with guys doing CNC laser and waterjet and routered text for public art projects. I’d first seen vinyl cut graphics in Beijing in ‘94 in the window of a sign maker’s shop. “The Balcony” project in Kensington Market in Toronto was all based on contemporary signage: people emailed me illustrator files from all over the world, I emailed them to the local sign maker who output to vinyl on coroplast. That was in 2000 when I moved to Toronto.

It was also Lauren who suggested a few years ago that Baudelaire was my grandpa. I initially thought she was talking about the full moon forehead. It took some time to realize she was referring to a shared love of the ephemeral beauties of city life. Such exquisite leftovers!

Public Works

As part of a group show called “Provisional Worlds”, curated by Jessica Bradley, the facade of the AGO was altered with adhesive vinyl semi-circles in pink and white.

Concession, Art Gallery of Ontario 2002

“The Balcony” project (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto was based on contemporary signage and public exposure: people emailed me illustrator files from all over the world, I emailed them to the local sign maker who output to vinyl on coroplast. That was in 2000 when I moved from NY to Toronto. My balcony was the “terminal view” on Wales Ave in the market—head of the T-intersection with sight lines that reached back to Bathurst, 1/2 a mile to the west.
I did the last project (Final Concession) in 2005.

“The Balcony” project, Nestor Kruger, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Tumi Magnusson, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Kristan Horton, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Hlynur Hallsson, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Carlo Cesta, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, AA Bronson, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Corrine Carlson, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Neil Campbell, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

“The Balcony” project, Marco Breuer, (2000-2005) in Kensington Market in Toronto.

Final Concession, “The Balcony” project, James Carl, 2005

Museums and Galleries

Do You Know What ( A Survey 1990-2008), 2008-2009 Curated by Barbara Fisher with catalogue.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto.

Rasta Fries, installation view, Do You Know What ( A Survey 1990-2008)
2008-2009 MacDonald Stewart Art Centre now Art Gallery of Guelph.

Banner Drawing, installation view, Do You Know What ( A Survey 1990-2008)
2008-2009 MacDonald Stewart Art Centre now Art Gallery of Guelph.

Miscellaneous Graphics, installation view, Do You Know What ( A Survey 1990-2008)
2008-2009 MacDonald Stewart Art Centre now Art Gallery of Guelph.

Double Negative, Logo for the exhibition Do You Know What (A Survey 1990-2008)
Curated by Barbara Fisher, with catalogue.
2008-2009 MacDonald Stewart Art Centre now Art Gallery of Guelph.

From the series Manners, Solo Exhibition Open Space Victoria, B.C. 2003

International Brief, Promises – group exhibition, 2001, curated by Christina Ritchie,
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.

International Briefs, 2000, Robert Birch Gallery, Toronto.

“Manners”, ceramic tile and aluminum. Private commission Zhongun Investment Group, Beijing, 2007.

Legend, (cover and spread), 2000, Artist Book Published by Art Metropole, Little Cockroach Press Series.

Wall painting proposal, 1998-2010

Scroll, 1998, monotype, vinyl on blackboard

Guitar, 1998, monotype, vinyl on blackboard

James Carl: content: a survey, 2016, TrépanierBaer Gallery

“a Rose is a Rose…”, group show curated by Zhou Xin
How Museum, Wenzhou, China, 2019-2020

James Carl – Bio

James Carl (Canadian b. 1960) received his MFA from Rutgers University in 1996 after receiving diplomas from the Central Academy in Beijing (1995 & 1990), a BA from McGill University in Montréal (1992), and a BFA from the University of Victoria (1983). Carl’s educational experience was unique in that it spanned continents and cultures and immersed him a vast dialogue of artistic influences ranging from formalist approaches to art to the emerging generation of China’s contemporary art scene, and Conceptual and Fluxist philosophies. He is currently professor of Studio Art at the University of Guelph outside Toronto, Canada.

For nearly thirty years Toronto based sculptor James Carl has been crafting small and large-scale sculptures from a wide variety of materials ranging from cardboard and marble to most recently, venetian blinds. The notions of craft and labour have been at the root of his studio practice and have set the conceptual framework for his work that ranges from powerful and ironic critiques of globalization and consumerism to celebrations of early and mid 20th century modern sculpture. Contemporaneous to his practice has a sculptor James Carl has made a series of important prints and drawings. He has curated, and been included in numerous public art interventions and exhibitions that have featured his graphic work.

James Carl’s work has been exhibited at various institutions in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. The most recent include: a group exhibition with Shi Yong titled A Rose is a Rose is a Rose , curated by Zhou Xin at the How Museum, Wenzhou, China (2019/2020), and the parallel exhibitions titled James Carl: oof and James Carl: woof (2018) at the Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey (2018-19). Other exhibitions of note include: Steadfastly Raise the Standards in Nonproductive Construction, Don Gallery, Shanghai, 2018; The Preservationists, Duddell’s, Hong Kong ( 2018); James Carl – content : a survey (2016), TrépanierBaer, Calgary; side effect (2012), Diaz Contemporary, Toronto; It Is What It Is: Recent Acquisitions of New Canadian Art ( 2010), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; James Carl: do you know what: A Survey 1990-2008 (2008-09), Justina M. Barnicke at the University of Toronto; Macdonald Stewart Art Center, Guelph; and Cambridge Galleries, Queen’s Square, ON; and negative spaces (2006), Florence Loewy, Paris, France, to name a few. James Carl has produced large-scale public art works such Thing’s End (2012) at the TIFF Lightbox/Festival Tower; and has completed a large-scale outdoor work in China (2019). He is currently working on a major sculpture project for a corporate entity in Calgary. James Carl’s works can be found public collections in Canada, including: Foreign Affairs, Canada; National Gallery of Canada; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and in numerous private collections in Canada, US, China, Germany.