Event Review - James Nares

In Conversation: James Nares

Saturday, January 28^th at the Milwaukee Art Museum

By: Mandy Litwin

Seeing James Nares talk at the Milwaukee Art Museum this past weekend was very enjoyable. He is a multi-media visual artist who especially focuses on film-making. I had gone into the talk not knowing too much about his art. Though it was initially a bit slow getting into it, the way James Nares discussed his work – in sort of a chronological order – ended up making each piece make sense. He seems to have a big fascination with change over time, as well is sort of the human presence in those changes.

The talk was very informative and light hearted as he went through various videos and art works and explained their backgrounds. One of my pieces was Street in which he uses a high speed camera to capture people going about their everyday lives in the streets of New York. Besides being generally visually stimulating, it was interesting to see the tiniest details of the people; facial expressions, motions, and more. Due to the fact that the videos are shown at such a slow speed, you are given the ability to study the figures and make implications about each person.

Another example of his work that shows a sense of change over time are his paintings in which he creates a set of moving lines on a surface that moves continuously on a rotating cylinder. He creates brushes that push paint through them onto the surface as he desires. The motion of the cylinder creates the effect of continuous and winding lines on the piece.

James Nares work is quiet and subtle, but opens a world of fascination and deeper thinking when closely looked at.

Event Review - James Nares: In the City

In Conversation: James Nares

Saturday, January 28, 3:00pm   Lubar Auditorium, Milwaukee Art Museum
in conjunction with  Helen Levitt: In the Street | James Nares: In the City 
January 27 through April 16, 2017

By Rebeka Schmieder

James Nares is a jack of all trades artist. He has sunk is hands into art forms that explore time in different mediums. His work is experimental and expressive. He was born in England and moved to New York to pursue his career as an artist in 1974. Nares work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. 

He is an inventor because most of works required him to create instruments to achieve his vision. His large scale paintings required him to make his own brushes that created a seamless free-forming stroke across the canvas. His most recent work, Street, is confronting and mesmerizing. This slow-motion video focuses on the small moments in time. In his talk he mentioned that his purpose for making this video was to find those small cracks in time where people put their guard down. 

Street James Nares

What I found in most of his works was Nares interest in how time effects different things. I notice this more in his films than his paintings. I connected with Street because street photography has always been one of my "back burner" interests. When I sat down in the viewing space, I got fully immersed into the film. I saw what would be in real time split seconds, as the cracks in time that Nares was talking about in his lecture. I also enjoyed the music that accompanied the film. This simple guitar acoustics made me think more about individuals in the video. Nares said that movement is music, so he made the choice music based on this notion. I think that when I took street photos I didn't pay attention to so much the little moments, but the overall picture so to speak. There is so much life in the city and to zoom in on the so called cracks in time would give more clarity and meaning to my street photography.