Installation view

Angel, 2004, velours, acryl, papier maché, iron, 162.56x203.2x53.34 cm

"A joyous science
To borrow a term from Nietzsche we could say that, in the hands of James Hyde, art is transformed to a “gay” or “joyous science”. In Nietzsche’s view, such a science is interested in the extraordinary, in possibility and abundance; conversely, it is disdainful of the earnestness of norms and the asceticism of analytic reduction. Ultimately this science converges with art. But as Nietzsche writes in the Foreword to his book, if we still have any genuine need of art, then it is of one that is “a mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art, which, like a bright flame, flickers into cloudless skies.” Hyde’s art is of precisely this kind. It is sensation in two senses of the word. The surprises of its ever-novel twists appeal to sensory perception, which it both stimulates and evades wherever the latter has become habitual. Hyde’s art is also “joyous” in the sense that its pronounced historical awareness precludes the possibility of regarding abstract art as an endgame in which the great tradition of western art is destined to culminate. For Hyde, abstraction is if anything a source of inexhaustible potential, one that fills him with the optimism that every discovered solution gives rise to at least two new possibilities." (Michael Lüthy in JAMES HYDE, 2005)

James Hyde (*1958) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Elbow, 2003, fresco and cement on styrofoam, 17.8 x 28 x 17.8cm

Knot, 2005, Nylon webbing, 2005, 210 x 180 x 36 cm

Catalogue JAMES HYDE, Texts by Alexi Worth, Michael Lüthy, Catherine Perret, 124 pages, 24,5 x 28,5 cm. Published by Les Filles du calvaire Paris, Brent Sikkema New York, Elisabeth Kaufmann Zurich and the institutions Le Crédac Paris et CAC Pouges-Les Eaux , 2005.

Installation view