James Bantone

Swiss Institute (SI) presents the first solo exhibition in the US by artist James Bantone, featuring newly commissioned sculptural works made from an accumulation of photographs of display mannequins, sourced from commercial catalogs, which are rendered through an acrylic and gel lift transfer process onto steel sheets. With a textural residue akin to wheatpasted street advertisements, the images are hung on walls and mounted on standing displays in a liminal Soho storefront. The fading figures are improvised soliloquies, their titles drawn from ad libbed lyrics by popular rap artists. Ciphering between traces of vacant bodies and the documented memory of them, they are at once visible and indiscernible.

SI gratefully acknowledges Site [Dion Lee] for hosting the show at 11 Mercer, marking their first in a series of events and programming under the platform. This exhibition is organized together with Cédric Fauq, chief curator at Capc musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux. Words by Angelique Rosales Salgado.

James Bantone (b. 1992 in Geneva; lives and works in Paris) graduated with a Bachelor of Art & Media - Video at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2019 and completed the Work.Master - Contemporary Artistic Practices at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) in 2021. He has had solo exhibitions at Karma International, Zurich (2023), Coalmine, Winterthur (2020), and participated in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zurich (2023), Simian, Copenhagen (2023), Klemm’s Gallery, Berlin (2023), Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2023), Centre d'Art Contemporain de Genève (2022) Cordova, Barcelona (2021), Swiss Institute, New York (2020), Kunsthalle Fribourg (2020), and UV Estudios, Buenos Aires (2019).