In his debut museum exhibition, Burying Painting, James Perkins treats nature as a collaborator to revisit and extend conversations around action painting, sculpture, and land art. Burying Painting also names his method: he wraps minimalist wooden structures in dyed silk, partially buries them outdoors, and lets months, sometimes years, of sun, wind, rain, salt, soil, and time rewrite their surfaces. The works are ultimately “harvested” from their burial sites and remounted to carry with them an “environmental memory shaped by nature’s agency, power, and beauty. Colors that began as bold forest greens and hot pinks mellow into earthier tones, and the silk’s vertical folds create column-like bands of uneven exposure: the outer ridges weather and lighten, while the inner folds stay darker, to leave luminous, column like, gradients.”

The preparator staff at SMoCA opted to use the Cielux LED lights to illuminate the work in their galleries. The Fresnel and par fixtures (P3F and P3X) created a broad, general wash across the space, while the ellipsoidals (P1L and P3L) were able to create beautiful highlights. The sharpness of the leko cuts allowed the staff to frame a painting with no visible fringing or edges - creating the effect that the painting is glowing and vibrant enough to “pop” off the wall. The fixtures' tunable color and CCT allowed the staff to tailor the lighting of each installation, ensuring every piece of art looks its best. While prior galleries relied on a fixed CCT for the entire space, SMoCA elevated the guest experience and artist presentation by finding the best way for each piece to be displayed - a feat that’s only accomplished with tunable, dynamic fixtures.

Perkins calls the finished pieces “post-totem” structures. Drawing on the totem as a marker of identity and position, he uses them to question the systems that separate us from nature and from one another. Because of this, the meaning of his work emerges through nuanced lighting shifts that reveal exposure-worn color changes, as pigments and textures shift or mute depending on the spectral qualities of the light on the work. With some fine tuning, a bold vision, and the right tools, SMoCA was able to translate Perkins’s philosophy in Burying Painting into a viewing experience that clearly conveys the artist’s intent.

Text reference:
Exhibition context and terminology adapted from “James Perkins: Burying Painting,” Southwest Contemporary.

James Perkins | Burying Painting, installation view, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 2025. Photo: Gabby Usinger. Courtesy Scottsdale Arts.