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Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas is pleased to announce the opening of the poem’s four corners, a solo exhibition of new work by James Buss. An opening reception will be held for the artist on Saturday, September 10, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. The exhibition continues through November 12.

Taking an approach which may vary in formal terms but stems from a common concept, Buss’ work begins with a solitary affection, however slight it may be, that opens to a spectrum of references using an initial gesture or imprint and the forensic properties of plaster as a medium of empathy and mimesis. Buss also employs photographs and drawings to investigate his interest in the onset of the image. Traces (impressions, marks, residue, and remains) and the creation/depiction of banal spaces provide subtle hints of imprecise notions or remembrances. By these means evocative, telling images are impressed on the senses or the mind. His interest in the materialization of textual metaphor through casting and monotypes forms the core of his studio practice. 

“In the poem’s four ‘corners’ there are telling images impressed by ink and transferred; something whose pictorial condition is supported by a page not given to reading but rather to vision, a page defined by its shape, its space, its condition as quadrilateral. The four corners of a sheet are more than a merely physical limit, they are a logical premise. They are the conditions of possibility, the logical relations of which a whole system can be derived, they construct a frame that both generates and contains a universe.”—Maurice Blanchot

James Buss is a Fort Worth native. He holds a Bachelor of Science from East Texas State University, Commerce, and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. After living in Los Angeles for many years, Buss has returned to Texas and now lives and works in Weatherford.

Buss’ work has been exhibited in Dallas’ Site 131 summer presentation, Black “Paintings”: a response to Jackson Pollock. This group exhibition responds to the recent Dallas Museum of Art’s impactful show of Jackson Pollock’s black paintings.

Other recent exhibitions in Dallas include Sojourner, 611 Bedford Street; Is the art pretty? No, says Mummy. Pretty is not important, Beefhaus; and MTV Redefined, The Goss-Michael Foundation. His work has also been seen in group exhibitions at Stichting Kaus Australis, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; 6018 Wilshire Boulevard, Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Los Angeles; In Search of Turrell, Jaus Gallery Los Angeles; and in the solo show Outside the Phantastikon, Hello Project Gallery, Houston.