James Perkins | Burying Painting
Sep 20, 2025 - Feb 15, 2026
Burying Painting presents process-based land art by James Perkins in his first museum exhibition, highlighting the artist’s approach to nature as a collaborator.
About
Burying Painting presents process-based land art by James Perkins in his first museum exhibition, highlighting the artist’s approach to nature as a collaborator. The hard-edge, minimalist sculptures made of silk, wood, and stone are created through durational exposure to nature’s powerful forces and elements, such as hurricane winds, ocean water, rain, sea salt, soil, sun, and even wildlife. The exhibition title, Burying Painting, refers to Perkins’s study and exploration of the history of action painting, sculpture, and land art. The title also alludes to his singular technique of burying textile-wrapped structures and leaving them semi-exposed in the landscape for months or years, using the landscape as his painting palette. Once the outdoor duration is finished, the works are “harvested” from the land. The transfigured materials are relieved and re-stretched onto frames, creating painting-like works with shifting color fields and varied textures capturing nature’s agency, power, and beauty.
Perkins’s artistic philosophy positions his sculptures as “post-totem structures,” referencing symbolic objects that express individual and collective identity. Throughout history, totems have evolved from ancestral signifiers to symbols of positionality. Rather than diminishing the value of totems, Perkins’s philosophy challenges human-nature relationships by symbolically neutralizing systems that disconnect us from the natural world and each other. The exhibition features floor and wall sculptural works that have been created in various locations and shaped by their environments, including the beaches of Fire Island and the Sonoran Desert. The exhibition will also highlight the artist’s site-specific and performative process through short films and documentary photography.
Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Lauren R. O’Connell, curator of contemporary art. Support provided by Collaborating Sponsor Gary N. Owen.
James Perkins
James Perkins (b. 1978) lives and works in New York City and Fire Island, New York. He received a bachelor of arts from Yale University and a master of fine arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His work spans land art installations, sculpture, painting, photography, and film. He has exhibited work with Metro Pictures, New York University’s The Institute of Fine Arts, County Gallery, Hannah Traore Gallery, Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, MANA Contemporary, Tappan Collective, Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, Dallas Contemporary, MTV RE: DEFINE, and the School of Visual Arts. Lectures include The Art Institute of Chicago, NYU The Institute of Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Avant-Garde, and the University of Wisconsin.
His work has been featured in Domino magazine, Robb Report, Wallpaper, Artsy, LUXE Interiors & Design, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, ABC, Teen Vogue, Hodinkee, and Entrepreneur magazine, among others. His brand collaborations include West Elm, J. Crew, Huckberry, Sleepy Jones, Lulu and Georgia, Faust Wines, UBS, Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH) brands, and The Standard Hotels.
Residency at Cattle Track Arts Compound
October 2024
James Perkins began a residency at Cattle Track Arts Compound to create new works in the Sonoran Desert for his upcoming solo exhibition at SMoCA. The residency allowed the artist to explore his unique process within a new environment based in the US Southwest, a region known for its unique geography, extreme climate, complicated cultural heritage, and historical earthworks. Perkins worked closely with the exhibition curator, Lauren R. O’Connell, and with the assistance of Danielle Ochoa, Wabwila Mugala, and Germán Escobar, to create five triangular frames wrapped in various shades of silk. Once complete, a sparse location was sourced and the objects were oriented on the site. At dusk, Perkins began his post-totem performance of partially burying the objects in the land. Working with and against the setting sun, the artist installed his work in its new home for the next several months.
James Perkins at his Post-Totem installation with Camelback Mountain in the background.
Perkins with Mugala and Escobar at Cattle Track Arts Compound.
April 2025
Perkins returned to Cattle Track Arts Compound to “harvest” the works from the site. Over six months, the works were transformed by nature as it “painted” the delicate silk through sun exposure, winter rain, dust storms, and unexpected interactions with a pack of coyotes. Perkins unearthed the objects and, with the assistance of his archivist, Amy Cowart, and O’Connell, carefully removed the silk from their structures. While three were deconstructed, two remained as they were, deemed complete by the artist after witnessing the effects of the coyotes’ interactions with the structure and silk. In their finished state, they became the artworks Animalistic Love and Savage Love (2025). These two works were taken to Arizona State University’s Natural History Collections warehouse and placed in a large walk-in freezer for two weeks, ensuring that any harmful pests would not join them in the museum. The remaining silks were shipped back to Perkins in New York to be re-stretched over painting frames in preparation for their debut in James Perkins: Burying Painting at SMoCA.
Perkins “harvesting” his artwork from the site.
Perkins with one of the silks removed from its structure after six months in the desert.
Perkins and O’Connell.
Cattle Track Arts Compound
Cattle Track Arts Compound is a place significant for its national and local historic designations. It’s a collection of people who earned the historic distinction by being forward-thinking souls. The compound provides a place for the greater arts and culture of Scottsdale.
This residency was supported by Janie Ellis of Cattle Track Arts Compound in collaboration with Scottsdale Arts and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
Perkins and Janie Ellis at Cattle Track Arts Compound.
Press
James Perkins’ first museum exhibition comes to SMoCA (Scottsdale Arts news release)
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