Bugada & Cargnel

James Hopkins

Big Red
2003
wood, métal
90 x 20.5 centimeters
Unique

'Big Red' is an axe whose handle has been whittled into the shape of flower just starting to bloom from its stem, a poetic representation of the opposition between nature and a manufactured object. Nature reclaims its rights while the manufactured object returns to its material origins.

James Hopkins

Fata Morgana
2003
plastic, mirror, sand
25 x 27 centimeters

Poetry and humour are to be found in this sculpture that captures a paradisiacal holiday landscape in a simple bucket.

James Hopkins

Paradox Passage
2002
198.4 x 80 centimeters
Unique

The door 'Paradox Passage' has an opening made of two vertical sections standing at right angles to the wall; these sections are attached on either side of two perpendicular mirrors. The door appears to be open or closed depending on one's viewpoint, introducing an alternative dimension to the space.

James Hopkins

Rocking Chair
2003
103.5 x 64.5 centimeters
Unique

In this work, poetry is coupled with humour. Placed on a point of extreme balance, at the same time perfect and precarious, it seems to defy the laws of gravity - like a three-dimensional snapshot of the precise moment before the fall.

James Hopkins

Salvation Lies Within
2003
123 x 52 centimeters
Unique

A meticulous masterpiece, 'Salvation Lies Within' is a paper gun cut out from the pages of an illustrated family bible. Every page has been cut in a way such that the joined scraps produce a three-dimensional gun. Referring to the cliché of the American Wild West in which people would hide their gun in an artificial bible, the sculpture also evokes a strong association to print as an object of power and religion as a source of conflict.

James Hopkins

Spun Out Simpsons
2003
148 x 140 centimeters
Unique

The Simpsons is an anamorphic composition of pieces of curved coloured plastic forming a family portrait with the characters of the eponymous cult cartoon. This distorted representation is only legible from a determined viewpoint, seen from anywhere else the sculpture is nothing but an abstract and incoherent accumulation. With humour, James HOPKINS joins the classic tradition of anamorphosis with a production of popular contemporary culture - the cartoon. Both, anamorphosis and cartoons seem to escape the laws of logic and make a remark about the flexibility of reality.

James Hopkins

Traverser
2003
270 x 35 centimeters
Unique

"Traverser" is an anamorphic step ladder, an object that Hopkins refers to as a metaphor for success.