James Coleman, Irish, b.1941
Title: Still Life (yellow version)
Date: 2013-2016
Medium: Digital projection, continuous, color, silent
Dimensions:
Projection: 400 × 225 × 500 cm
Credit Line: Purchased, 2022
Object Number: NGI.2022.44
DescriptionThis digital video installation presents a silent, large-scale projection of an uprooted poppy against a black background. The complete structure of the plant, from root to petal, is presented to the viewer as a motionless specimen. However, overtime and only through the viewer’s patient observation, do slow movements in the roots and petals of the living plant reveal themselves. The work is a contemplation on the history of still-life and flower painting in Western European art, focusing both on the genre’s mimetic representation of nature and its symbolic values. The poppy appears traditionally in art western art as a symbol of peace, dreams and trance – various states of consciousness that are reflected in the highly meditative character of Coleman’s film.
ProvenancePurchased, 2022
Exhibition HistoryMarrian Goodman Gallery, London, 2016
Marrian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2017
James Coleman, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2021
Marrian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2017
James Coleman, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2021