Jim Lambie: Liquid Head: Body and Soul

For his tenth solo exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery, Glaswegian artist Jim Lambie transforms the gallery into a dynamic and fluid environment filled with a multitude of optical sensations. Liquid Head: Body and Soul will open Thursday, April 11 and continue through May 18, 2024.

In Liquid Head: Body and Soul, Lambie presents a variety of new works including five individual and two multi-panel Metal Box sculptures made from conjoined aluminum and polished steel panels; a lens-sculpture made with found sunglass lenses that are fused together using traditional stained glass techniques and solder materials; a mattress fully covered in a vast range of sewn-on buttons; a modified guitar amp bearing the title of the show Liquid Head; three Psychedelic Soulsticks, bamboo canes covered in multicolored yarn and concealing secret objects of the artist’s choice, each one combined with a painted panel made my transferring deep-hued make-up from the artist’s body onto canvas, a new process Lambie puts to use. All this is embedded in an enormous, all-encompassing vinyl floor and staircase installation in silver chrome called The Strokes.

Lambie’s work reverberates between sound and color; music and optical theory; psychedelics and physics; industrial mass-produced objects and the hand-made; subject and object; with numerous allusions to the worlds of rock & roll, psychedelia, synesthesia, color theory, etc.  All that is enveloped in the spirit of his hometown Glasgow, one of the most prominent cities of the early Industrial Revolution, the home to visionary designer, artist, and architect of the new Glasgow School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as well as the Punk and DIY ethos that has invigorated and animated the city’s culture to which Lambie’s electrifying work has much contributed. 

The title of the show, Liquid Head: Body and Soul, seems to straightforwardly point at the classical dualism of the physical and non-physical worlds, the mind-body distinction. “Liquid” and “head” conjure up associations, ranging from a “head” as a person who is obsessive about things to the “head” as an amplifier without speaker. Yet, the key word here seems to be “liquid,” which qualifies the three subsequent nouns (head, body, soul) and relativizes the separation between the physical and the non-physical in favor of a state of flux and mutability. The artist seems to hand the key to constant evolution/motion to the artwork itself, the work the viewer can partake in. In this sense, the artwork represents not a distinction or separation but a state of continuous exchange and synchronicity akin to the state of liveliness in nature. Calling Lambie’s work “naturalistic” in any way or form seems a paradox, however, Liquid Head: Body and Soul carries all the elements of the fluid dynamics found in nature.

Jim Lambie (b. 1964, Glasgow) studied at the Glasgow School of Art and he continues to live and work in the city. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; Arts Council Collection, London, UK; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Instituto Horizontes, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; TATE, London, UK; Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art Foundation, Vienna, Austria; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. In 2000, Lambie was presented the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in London; and in 2005 his installation Mental Oyster was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. In 2003, he represented Scotland at the 50th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include ​​Jim Lambie at the Peninsula New York, Peninsula New York, New York, NY (2023); Zobop presentation at the Kochi Biennale, Fort Kochi, Kochi, Kerala, India (2022);  Zobop (Cerulean) Stairs, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, The Netherlands (2019); Spiral Scratch, Pacific Place, Hong Kong (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Jiang ‘an International Sculpture Project, Jing’an Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China (2023); The Mirror of Production, Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo, Norway (2022); MY CARTOGRAPHY, The Erling Kagge Collection, Sala de Arte Santander, Madrid, Spain (2020); Cut and Paste | 400 Years of Collage, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland (2019); Op Art in Focus, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2018); Mad World, Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Five Plus Five: Sculptures of China and Great Britain, Haikou Hainan Airlines Sun & Moon Plaza, Hainan, China (2018); and ISelf Collection: The Upset Bucket, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018). Lambie’s work is currently included in Space – Sight – Line, The Church Sag Harbor, Sag Harbor, NY.