In 2002 I began making art which involved adding layers of Gesso on wooden panels and then reducing the surface by partially sanding the paint away. This is a young me showing the painting "Volta Face" in 2003 at my then studio in Ismaning.
Bio
Simon James is an artist whose practice is rooted in painting and extended through the construction and disruption of surface. Working with materials such as gesso not as ground but as medium, he develops works that operate between painting and low relief, where the image is built, eroded, and reconstituted over time.
His works emerge through processes of layering, incision, sanding, and removal, often developed over extended periods and revisited repeatedly to produce compositions in which colour, form, and structure remain in active tension. Surfaces retain the physical memory of their making, resulting in images held between accumulation and rupture, control and instability, concealment and emergence.
Fragments of figuration, architecture, geological form, and landscape intermittently surface and recede within shifting spatial conditions. The image becomes an amalgam of temporal layers, constructed through sustained engagement with material and process rather than predetermined composition.
Solo exhibitions include presentations at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich (2016, 2023), and Praterinsel, Munich (2014–2017). Group exhibitions include Neue Stadt Museum, Landsberg am Lech, with further presentations in Madrid. Recent work has been shown at Domagk Ateliers and Wiede Fabrik, Munich, where James maintains a long-standing studio practice.
He lives and works in Munich.