Lights On The Water, Fire In The Night: Artist James Tapscott's Extraterrestrial-Looking Illuminations

Light is James Tapscott’s oeuvre, his theme, and his media, as the young artist deftly manipulates the material in the most unlikely of places. The intersection of illumination and physical space forms the body of his work, from remote rural landscapes to, recently, the urban metropolis. Using light in a transformative capacity, Tapscott harmonizes his installations with their surroundings so that nature (or un-nature) can inform and shape them.

Below, careful placed LED lights line a remote shoreline.

Working with the flow of the landscape to some extent involves relinquishing control to nature, and Tapscott uses this loss to enhance his work rather than fighting against it. As you can see from the photo above, the organic nature of his work almost makes pieces seem more surreal. “With some works, I set up a basic foundation of possibility and let nature take its course… literally,” he explains."That methodology came from experiences where trying to exert too much control was hindering the outcome of the work.”

As the critic John Berger theorizes in his seminal texts, Ways of Seeing and About Looking, the very essence of art is informed by how it is perceived. Art, by definition, resists completion and stasis - it is a continually developing process, and Tapscott takes this into account by acknowledging that the truest sense of his work lies in the experience of viewing as well as creation, rather than just the physicality of the object. “[T]he experience itself consists of more than just the work - its also the viewers journey prior to seeing the work (…) There is a psychological preparation everyone undergoes in some way before viewing a piece of art that greatly effects their experience of the art itself,” he told us.

Using the influence of natural forces on his work has given Tapscott his greatest learning experience. Ephemeral in their essence, his creations are ongoing experiments more than anything else, and revisiting an existing sites often leads him to new ideas he can improve on- new approaches with new methods, materials and intentions. The result is the same location taking on a radically different feel, or an identical installation being transformed by a new surrounding:

(Above: Totem gives off the feeling of having stepped into Close Encounters as it lights up a the forest. Below, the same sculpture transports the desert into a Roswell-ian wasteland.)

Although Tapscott has been exploring the cityscape over the past 18 months for a residency in New York City, a place he describes as “one of the most unnatural” on the planet, nature remains an endless source of inspiration for him, a constant learning curve that never gets less steep and as a result, more humbling. It is the “organic chaos” of natural elements that draws him in, a chaos he seeks to preserve in his work. Sometimes this leads him to doubt the amount of personal contribution he has put into a site, but as he explains, “I've learnt that an excessive presence counteracts what I'm trying to achieve - a combination of subtle and sublime.”

Designed a few years ago, the Transference Field is an installation of fiber optic cables suspended from a grid of poles that employs existing wind currents, or the lack thereof,  to reflect the natural energy of the site.

The subtle and the sublime engage seamlessly with each other in Flow (seen below), a series of installations where light is conflated with water in its natural movement and their shared capacity to fill the space they occupy. Time is the essence behind Flow, as well as the compression/decompression of photography, and the ongoing narrative they create. Fascinated by their interaction, Tapscott plans to combine light and water for a long time yet, using materials such as fiber optic cables - one of his favorite tools. Fiber optic cables are also used extensively in his urban installations, spilling out of orifices in concrete wastelands, adding an unexpected touch of sublimity to the desolation.

As an artist working extensively with natural forms to the complete avoidance of language, the linguistic adaptation required for the cityscape proved to be one of the greatest challenges Tapscott faced. Unable to work in his usual mode, he felt confused and frustrated until he realized that it was because of the linguistic cacophony the urban space constantly encircled him in. Commenting on this phenomenon, he says, “Everything (there) is made, or placed with a sense of purpose in some way by the hands of man, and this presence of intent forces you to engage in a different dialogue with the space you're in. (…) I had to involve the language of the built environment in my work.” Despite the variation in tone, Tapscott’s urban works are executed with a clarity of vision that belies no hint of his initial distress.

Tapscott is currently in Slovakia, installing the Transference Field at the White Light Festival - a one night light festival held this year in Kosice, Europe's Capital of Culture for 2013.

Photosynthesis

Below, check out James Tapscott discussing his 2013 Artecycle:

James Tapscott