James Whitman Art Opening November 3, 2007

For the Month of November 2007 @ Blim Gallery
Blim presents:

Some Kings
New Mural and Diorama by James Whitman

Most of my drawings are something like an attempt to present a coherent fiction. They could be a kind of science fiction, not in a genre sense but in a sense of picture-making. I'm not picturing events or narratives but more a possible environment or a way things could look. The settings are invented, uninhabited, mundane interior British Columbia landscapes drawn with a denatured idiosyncratic vocabulary of abstract ornamental mark making. The detail of the landscapes rendering serves to lend some reality to the creatures or buildings inhabiting them. Their settings aren't unlikely. The figures or creatures are meant to be deadpan or have low affect. Like wild animals, they don't have any society with us. They are caricatured 'alien' or 'other' subjects generated from a formal play with the construction of face, countenance and the kinds of social space these can generate. They present their gaze but they don't engage us, their faces don't read.



James Whitman lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. He mostly makes drawings and sometimes other things. Over the years he's worked with such famous collaborators as 536, Patrick Chan, Jo Cook, Owen Plummer, The Cartoon Wars, Kiku-Haux, and the Lions. This summer he was at the *Blumen* artist residency in Leipzig, Germany, and recently completed a series of lino-cuts for 'Lubok 3', edited by Christoph Ruckhaberle. A new zine of his work, 'Some Kings', will be released by Cederteg Publishing this month.

www.outbuildingsandlivestock.ca

Opening: Saturday, November 3 - 8:00pm.

Exhibition: Runs November 3- 24

Official Website: http://www.blim.ca