Color 8.2 Buy This Issue Now

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James Kirkpatrick is firing in all directions. The artist and musician has produced a new body of kinetic sculptural work that blends his two vocations, issuing forth sounds reminiscent of early video games that correspond to the viewer’s interactions. These sculptures are formally reminiscent of the London, Ontario-based artist’s drawings and paintings, which have recently undergone a stylistic shift from high-contrast etched works that evoke a friendlier Jean Dubuffet, towards amorphous, lumpy pastel-hued figures. Where the earlier works reflected an interest in street art, marginal spaces, refuse and found objects, the newer works (though not disavowing these influences) draw up a different set of associations that range from mid-century French faux-naive artist Nikki de Saint-Phalle to Kirkpatrick’s contemporaries like Jason McLean and Marc Bell (with whom the artist exhibited in the touring exhibition Pulp Fiction, that began at Museum London and continues at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax).