Why James Capper Is Not Just Another Artist

While doom scrolling on Instagram just earlier this week, I came across a time-lapsed video of a kinetic performance art sculpture i'd long forgotten about titled Can't Help Myself, created by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu.

In short, the kinetic sculpture, made in 2016, resembled one giant moving robot arm and was programmed by hydraulic fluid to help it move - but this very fluid was also simultaneously programmed to keep leaking. The robot's job was to clear the fluid - which was a vivid crimson colour - in order to achieve longevity, making the sculpture's functioning the very thing that contributed to its planned demise. At the beginning, the robot arm only leaked small amounts, and so the other time it wasn't spilling its guts it was performing small dances to onlookers during the small 'breaks'. Over time, pools of liquid would leak en masse, increasing to the extent where the robot arm was left with no choice but to frantically clear up the fluid in order to fight for its survival, racing not only against time, but physics, too. In July 2019, the sculpture met its doomed fate and ceased to exist altogether, only after spending its last few days unrecognisably erratic.

This is not the fate of all Hydraulic sculptures, in fact, some even have a catharsis element to them, one induced by the act of sheer concentration mixed with experimentation. Take artist James Capper's work for example, whose intensely revolutionary and transformative artworks are made not by hand but instead, a hand-built hydraulic machine (made and programmed by Capper himself). Unlike Can't Help Myself, Capper's machines are not the final product (see his latest exhibition CURVE-BASED SYNTAX at Albion Jeune, closing next week), nor are they programmed to malfunction over time, 'they will run day in, day out without breakdowns', Capper tells me. They're also not trying to prove an ill-fated point about the fragility of human existence. What they do do is wholly steal your attention by dragging you into a trance-inducing, hypnotic swirl of colour.

'I want to start off by saying my practice is one that can get quite confusing because i'm not just a painter, i'm an engineer too', Capper tells me over Zoom, certifying his technological skills as well as his artistic ones. 'I work with so many faculties of people and in fact, i'm doing a few lectures and lots of tutorials at the Imperial College in Innovation Engineering which is a completely different subject to painting and sculpture', he tells me; an experience that clearly points towards Capper's own interest in bridging different disciplines and mediums together. As for the hypnotic swirls of colour i'm referring to? 'That's down to the machines', Capper informs. But don't be fooled, these are machines Capper has built and programmed himself - not some commercial shiny product bought on a whim on lastminute.com. 'I've been building machines all my life, it comes as natural to me as painting'.

'It actually started with the pandemic' he tells me. 'I was in my studio and there wasn't a huge amount to do so I made these two machines that essentially do the paintings for me and it's kind of gone on from there'. One of the machines Capper is referring to is the HYDRAPAINTER, (a kinetic sculpture that's helped him compose his ROTARY Paintings) 'it looks a bit like a coffee table with a spindle in the middle which acts as an arm that essentially makes the paintings', he explains... more similar to Yuan Yu's sculpture than many may care to realise after all then. The other is called the SPECKLER, 'which I think of as more akin to a power tool than anything else', Capper admits. Although both are made by a studio fabricated machine, the latter is handheld, meaning the result is often more impacted by the human controlling it. 'The machines are extremely industrial and run-on hydraulics: they will run day in, day out without breakdowns allowing me to just concentrate on colour distribution', Capper relays, u-turning to add a rather stark difference between his creations and that of Can't Help Myself.

Of course, two different machines mean two different types of paintings and so in addition to the ROTARY ones, Capper's also worked on his SPECKLED series 'which look like volcanic eruptions on the paper' according to the artist. 'The SPECKLER is my newest machine which is what makes it exciting but at the same time, the results are erratic because i'm still learning how to use them. Essentially, it quite literally broadcasts the paint - the only experience I have that can relate to it is when i've been driving behind a gritter lorry in the middle of winter and I can see it fling the grit across the road... the results are very erratic indeed'.

Both machines use the same paint which is Jotin Pioneer, a coating product for steel in offshore environments such as oil platforms and fishing trawlers. 'I came by the paint because I was working with a big mobile sculpture called MUDSKIPPER, which is actually part boat, part sculpture and so in order to get the right paint I went to different marine suppliers and found Jotin Pioneer, it's lent itself very well because there's no way of deleting it or reworking it once you've used it', Capper tells me. 'Especially when viewed in the context of the ROTARY Paintings', the artist clarifies. 'The paint is mixing on the paper as it's coming out so it's literally there and you're watching the colour change before your eyes. The human element comes in to help manipulate the distribution of the paint but really, it's the element of surprise that keeps it as exciting as the first day I discovered this'.

As you may have guessed, machinery is integral to the James Capper's Story, whether we're talking about art or not. Alas, it must be said their use and relevance has gone beyond the purposeful act of 'machine-making', shifting into the sculptural realm to double up as works of art in their own right. 'I’ve always wanted to build hydraulic painting machines, I have had sketchbooks with drawings for them as far back as 2010', Capper reveals. 'There is a tremendous level of freedom in the pursuit of a sculptural language that embraces new and old methods in engineering, even those yet to come. I'm always looking at ways to try and soften machines so they have this way of fitting into the world around us and so biomimicry is an expensive area of research in the engineering that goes into my mobile sculptures.'

Recognising the abrupt imagery that comes with words such as 'industrial' and even 'machinery' Capper takes a unique stance by blending this masculine world with the elegance of fine art and sculpture - a path that has been walked before but still - artists in this field are few and far between, although he has no problem reeling them off. 'I find as a sculptor I can make engineering away from the mass production of corporate industrial manufacturers', Capper observes of himself. 'Many Sculptors through the history of art have embraced methods of engineering both in a practical and radical way within the time they had worked, Ancient Greek bronze, to Leonardo De Vinci, to David Smith, to Rebecca Horn'.

CURVE-BASED SYNTAX does many things but at its core, its teachings go beyond colour theory and biomimicry. The Man vs Machine discourse will always be relevant to the development of art but what's most genius about Capper's work is its ability to reflect on the world around us. Similar to how Can't Help Myself was a commentary on the human existence, Capper's works are symbolic of collective life-changing events, acting as a reflection of the time they were made in.

'I name all my paintings as close to the political time they are made in, a time we all share within the algorithms we receive our news', noted Capper. 'For me, one algorithm I fell down a rabbit hole with was @YachtReport on YouTube, a channel that traditionally reviewed vessels and noted where they were in the world...The reports would show bottle necks of vessels all trying to get to free ports of sanctions, especially in Turkey where there was no 'punishment' so to speak; it was quite bizarre, and similar to parts of the pandemic, it felt unreal. The international communities’ sanctions where a clever non-violent method of condemning Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine because you have to remember, of course many of these yachts were Russian and so just by nature of them existing, represented immense power. It's a funny thing to see an object that is such a status symbol stripped so publicly.'

The permanence of history and time, mixed with the consistent and forever marks of the maritime paint Capper uses (not an intentional commentary of the Russian Super Yachts but once that ties in nicely with this context) is what makes his work so very real and honest. Colour alone might not do much, but when mixed into such incredibly delicate machinery, programmed by a mind that straddles a multitude of disciplines (as well as ears and eyes that are captivated by the news of the day), Capper's works become more than just circular speckles and blobs, they transform into witty pieces of commentary reflecting on the nature of human existence.

CURVE-BASED SYNTAX by James Capper at Albion Jeune is open to the public until 3 October.