James Capper: Mountaineer

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Mountaineer, a solo exhibition of new sculptures and works on paper by London-based artist James Capper, on view at 297 Tenth Avenue from February 12 – March 14, 2015. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the US and first with Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Mountaineer will feature a selection of imposing, welded-steel sculptures from the artists’ series of Mountaineer Teeth. Capper’s works follow the legacy of early Earthworks by Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson whereby abstract changes to the land are reflective of human engagement with the environment. However, in Capper’s large-scale public installations this idea is accentuated by an emphasis on the role of man-made machinery’s affect on the landscape. The exhibition also includes several illustrative works on paper, which relate to the artist’s realized and theoretical “Earth-Marking” machines. In Cabs for Step Type Markers, 2012, alternating designs for a future mechanism are worked out in the artist’s characteristically loose, playful manner – adding a humanistic element to an otherwise industrial entity.

Over the last decade, Capper has created a population of his human-operated machines designed to interact with specific forms of natural terrain. They are often outfitted with interchangeable components, which allow for a variety of earth-markings to be left as evidence of such performative interactions. The ongoing evolution of these apparatus’ has been similarly chronicled in Capper’s recent solo exhibitions: Divisions, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2013) and Tools of the Trade, Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2015). Capper will unveil a new monumental machine later this year as part of a commission by the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, UK.

James Capper was born in 1987 in London. He received his B.A. in Sculpture from the Chelsea College of Art and Design and his M.A. from the Royal Academy of Art, London, where he was presented with the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture. Capper’s works have been included in recent important exhibitions at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; The Moving Museum, Dubai; The Saatchi Gallery, London; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He lives and works in London, UK.