Beyond Surface Appeal - Literalism, Sensibilities, and Constituencies in the Work of James Carpenter (Paperback, New)

Two essays and a set of original diagrams consider the parameters of the something beyond in James Carpenter s projects. Architectural historian Mark Linder offers a long view of Carpenter s work, placing his early career as an installation artist and experimental filmmaker in the context of contemporary art practices. Linder draws out the continuities between this early work and Carpenter s current practice as a glass designer, demonstrating a consistent focus on literalism materiality, spatial perception, and inhabitation as opposed to phenomenological effect, expression, and representation. Architectural critic Sarah Whiting examines the sensibilities and constituencies that emerge from Carpenter s practice. Rather than succumbing to the technique of Brechtian estrangement (which has become a default strategy for avant-garde practices in all domains), Carpenter gently eases his viewers into new constituencies. Perceptions and publics are altered, although these alterations are never dictated. Carpenter s new worlds are not avant-garde but are more like dreams that embed themselves in the back of one s mind, opening new possibilities without choreographing what those might be. Finally, Lucia Allais s diagrams offer a visual means of reading Carpenter s combination of technique and effect his means of making light material and making material present. Photographs and extended captions from Carpenter complete this book s documentation of key projects.