Boy Hairdresser: Jim Lambie

Opening Thursday, September 6, Anton Kern Gallery will present new work by Scottish artist Jim Lambie. This is the artist’s second solo show in New York.

Jim Lambie’s sculpture and installation work references music in a melody of objects and affected space. Drawing from his own experience in the Glasgow music scene, his influence tends to be more punk than polish. This can be seen with his incorporation of lo –hi found materials such as buttons, gloves, thread, paper and mirrors. Not unlike pop/rock music, he celebrates the direct experience over any kind of specific ideology.

In past work Lambie has transformed the surface of mundane gallery floors into musical staffs for his sculpture, using linear patterns made with vinyl tape. These lines suggest the dispersion of equally vibrant sound waves through space. Items with musical histories, such as vintage turntables, record covers, and weathered rock concert T-shirts have also been subject to Lambie’s unique process of alteration, becoming in the end something like totem objects.

For this show, the sculptures are oriented around a slowly spinning turntable-like form. This form appears as a location of origin for these objects. Lambie describes it as a “slow rotating center pulling the edges closer together.” For him, the sculptures and paintings “intervene, punctuate and orchestrate…like a needle on a record, picking out the notes on a long player.” In essence, for Lambie, these works “suggest the latent magic to be found in music.”