2007 Artists Statement download (doc)

PROJECT

THE LIMINAL OBJECT

Liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning "a threshold"): the moment of becoming, the space between worlds.

If subliminal means that which is below the threshold of ordinary consciousness and perception, then the liminal is the point of emergence, the threshold itself, the turning point between one realm and another. The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. Liminality is a period of transition, during which usual boundaries of thought, self-understanding, and behavior shift, opening the way to something new.

In my work with what I call liminal objects I ask the question:

When does an ordinary object move into other dimensions?

This question gives rise to more questions:

When does an object become recognizable?

What is the shape of that object just before that moment of recognition? What is it at that moment? Is it even then what it is about to become or is it something different?

At the threshold, is form pure energy, a radiance of color and light, a wave, a glimmer, simply a shimmer of becoming?

Would a liminal object be perhaps like a photograph, an image of a moment in time, a tiny piece of an endless continuum that moves from past to future, stopped in the present, now, forever? A reflection of that fleeting glimmer?

The liminal object is itself a question: “What am I?” Or as my Zen teacher used to say, “What was my face before my parents were born?”

My exploration of these questions begins with geometric shapes. As I draw those shapes, and play with them, and work with them, and invite them to transform, they shift into something almost recognizable, yet not quite; geometry relaxes, becomes fluid, organic, sensuous, and the object-to-be emerges.

The mediums that I choose are mutable and plastic and lend themselves naturally to the metaphor and exploration of emergence, becoming, and liminality

Color is the essence of a liminal object. Brilliant revlon reds, canary yellows, forest greens, and ice blacks wash over the form, empowering it, revealing the form itself as no other than color, energy, and light. The liminal object opens the doors of perception, carries the viewer beyond ordinary perception and definition, to that space between, where everything is what it is, and nothing is what it seems, where color, energy, light and form merge into one. That is where I do my work.

James Marshall
September 2006