Artist Statement
I reimagine mythic motifs and images through sculptures, paintings, moving images, and artists books that bridge inner and outer worlds. The works are grounded in illustration, an homage to the image as illumination. They take on the form of handmade ceramics, mixed-media paintings, animated films and videos, and artist books, and are presented in exhibitions, screenings, book fairs, and workshops.
An amalgam of disparate processes, materials, and traditions is used for worldbuilding and to explore personal mythologies and speculative fictions. It is a language synthesized from lived experience and remnants extracted from dominant cultures and histories. Together the works are evidence of an underground world breaching, or undermining, the surface, revealing an individual thread in a collective memory.
Bio
James Bascara is a multidisciplinary artist, animation filmmaker, and illustrator based in New York City. His works engage with painting, animation, ceramics, and book making, and have been exhibited internationally, with paintings and sculptures shown in exhibitions and events at EFA Project Space (New York, NY), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), and Blanc Gallery (Quezon City, PH); animations and videos presented at MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY), Slamdance Film Festival (Park City, UT, US), Centre Pompidou (Paris, FR), Fest Anča (Zilina, SK), and Cooperativ Werkraum (Berlin, DE); and book works can be found at Printed Matter and in the collections of the New York Public Library Print Collection and the Center for Book Arts.
