James Busby

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Busby Electric, a solo exhibition by South Carolina-based artist James Busby, and his second collaboration with the gallery. Consisting of a series of intimately scaled abstract works on panel, some as small as ten by eight inches, in a palette of black and white tonalities marked by occasional hints of color, the works are created using primarily gesso, graphite, cement, and spray paint with small touches of oil or acrylic paint. These paintings—some tondos, others rectangular, occasionally displayed on wooden shelves—explore Neo-Geo concepts and the relationship between material and surface through a sentimental framework. The exhibition's title refers to Busby’s father’s eponymously named motor repair shop.

Many of the pieces in the show are created from panel works that Busby previously made, was unsatisfied with and has cut to form new shapes, leaving the back supports as is. Marks that seemed in the past to be imperfect are reconsidered in a new context. Each work is begun not with an idea of a finished piece in mind, but with an uncertainty and a reliance on the process of making. Busby’s attraction to surface and shape becomes almost instinctive. In Busby’s hands gesso, a medium for creating a surface to paint over, is meticulously sanded and polished as if being treated like a precious stone. Graphite is repeatedly rubbed and burnished into the surfaces of the works creating an almost mirror-like surface—both dark in its blackish depth and silverish in its ability to reflect light. Fluorescent orange, green, blue, and yellow colors are applied to the backs of the works creating a reflective glow and further alluding to the title of the exhibition.

While seemingly formalistic at first glance, the works in Busby Electric are a personal reflection of memory, time, and place. Having lost his parents when he was young, Busby explores elements of his early life that reveal a feeling of nostalgia and contentment through the use of medium and method. Tactile experiences such as making graphite drawings on brown paper-bag book covers that inadvertently develop a patina, or sandblasting and spray-painting motors that were being rebuilt in his father’s shop inform his choice of materials and the process of their transformation. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi and practice of kintsugi come to mind in relation to Busby’s artistic practice with his considered attention to detail, respect for craft, and understanding of the preciousness of the mundane.