October 26 — December 7, 2024

A Jar in Tennessee

James Sullivan

 

 

Conduit Gallery is honored to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Dallas-based artist James Sullivan. The exhibition presents current investigations into the relationship between figure, object and landscape, meditating on Wallace Stevens’ poem ‘Anecdote of the Jar’, which reflects Stevens’ ambivalence about man’s ability to create order within the natural world.

A Jar in Tennessee brings together distinct yet related bodies of work including sculpture, installation and printmaking. The exhibition includes large cast-iron vessels including, Beaker, 2023, which was exhibited during Houston Sculpture month at The Silos at Sawyer Yards; a collection of bronze figures and objects from Sullivan’s ongoing sculptural practice that investigates collecting, forming, and re-forming objects through different media; and a series of new prints and photogravures that capture the dense landscape of the Manomet Wetland in Massachusetts. Shot on a vintage Poco III folding view camera, the long exposures capture an amorphous landscape simultaneously static and dissolving. Each of these bodies of work involve a philosophical-spatial reverie about the visual language of place and placing the human within the wilderness of the world.

An artist with more than 40 years’ experience, Sullivan is an innovative educator and cultural leader in the visual arts. He is currently President of the Board at the Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and Professor Emeritus of Sculpture in the Division of Art at Southern Methodist University, where he served as chair for 17 years. He exhibits widely in a number of media including sculpture, sculptural installation, performance, drawing, and prints. He has had over 25 solo or two-person exhibitions including at JIAAF, Hadong, South Korea; Galerie Sol del Rio and Concepción 41 in Guatemala; the Art Museum of South Texas; Meadows Museum of Art, Dallas; Amerika Haus, Berlin; Galerie Muhlenbusch, Düsseldorf; and the Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau. He has participated in group exhibitions throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. He is a 1989 recipient of the Philip Morris Skulptur Stipendiat to work in residency in Berlin, German, and the 2018 Distinguished International Artist at the Jursan International Art Foundation in Hadong, South Korea.

Sullivan earned his MFA degree in sculpture at California State University, Long Beach and BA in philosophy at Yale University. He has taught as Visiting Professor at the Hochschule de Kunste, Berlin, and Gachon University, Seoul South Korea and acted as Visiting Critic at the Yale School of Architecture, New Haven CT. He has been represented by Conduit Gallery, Dallas, since 1990. He lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

Artists in this Exhibition

Artist Video