I just came across James Clar’s work. After reading this Dubai-based American artist’s bio, it seems that I’m a bit late to the party with exhibits at The New Museum, Chelsea Museum, Chanel Mobile Art Exhibit in Tokyo, and many more under his belt. I found every piece showcased on Traffic’s site  interesting. There’s a lot of play with light and technology, but also very powerful statements with strong anti-war and political criticism undertones, well, maybe not so “under”, maybe more in-your-face, in a good way. This from the site:

While his early work dealt with analyzing how technology and media work, a move to the Middle East in 2007 has seen his focus shift to how technology and media affect. As an American living in Dubai, his art work has progressed towards deeper conceptual themes. These include nationalism, globalism, and popular culture in the age of mass information, and often analyses the discrepancy in information between Western media and Middle Eastern media along with its effects on people.

Briefly, a few captions from some of these works:

Friendly Fire (2nd row, right): A small soldier sits on a rotating platform in a mirror box. His motion is nervous as he constantly spins trying to find a target while only aiming at himself.

The Difference Between Me and You (3rd row, right): Two TV screens face each other, one playing Fox News and the other Al Jazeera. In between them is a diffused piece of acrylic that takes the light from the two screens and mixes them together.

Pop Culture (bottom left): a gun that James Clar, an American, and Rami Farook, an Emirati, took to the desert, fired, and then cast in candy.

There are many more works with interesting captions here. It’s worth a look if you like the small sampling in this post.

James Clar will be exhibiting as a part of Art Futures at the Art HK11 in Hong Kong from May 26-29, 2011.