EVENT DESCRIPTION
PhillipsX, the selling exhibition platform operated by Phillips’ global Private Sales team, is proud to present Dissecting the Square. Colours and Black by Alexander James. Showcasing a major new body of work, the selling exhibition marks a significant moment for the British-born multimedia artist, whose practice spans painting, sculpture, video, and installation. A graduate of Camberwell College of Arts in London, James has exhibited internationally in London, Paris, and New York, and is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most compelling voices of his generation.
The exhibition’s title originates from a formative moment in James’s studio. Recalling an early morning when sunlight sharply divided an empty canvas, James describes how the light was “literally dissecting the square.” This moment became the conceptual starting point for the series, framing the canvas as both a physical structure and a symbolic boundary. Dissecting the Square. Colours and Black by Alexander James brings together a new series of works in which the act of dissecting the square plays a pivotal role, both formally and conceptually. At the core of James’s practice is an ongoing exploration of the square as a site of fragmentation, repetition, structure, and possibility.
Alexander James’s new body of work is grounded in a rich art-historical lineage, engaging with artists who have explored, challenged, and redefined the square as one of abstraction’s most enduring forms. His practice enters a conceptual dialogue with the legacies of Josef Albers, Richard Diebenkorn, and Sean Scully, among others, while remaining distinctly his own.
The influence of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series is especially resonant. Like Albers, James uses the square as a formal structure through which perception is destabilized and reassembled. Yet where Albers explored chromatic relationships with rigorous restraint, James expands the form into expressive, psychologically charged compositions. While rooted in abstraction, James’s paintings are equally informed by portraiture and the fragmented presence of the human figure. Drawing from personal archives, recorded memories, and everyday observations, faces and Alexander James bodily forms emerge as psychological traces rather than literal representations. Often obscured or incomplete, these figures reflect the artist’s enduring interest in memory, perception, and the instability of image-making, existing in tension with the geometric structure of the square.
James’s work also resonates with the emotional architecture of Mark Rothko, the modular rigor of Donald Judd, the expanded geometries of Frank Stella, and the radical formal propositions of Kazimir Malevich. Echoes of Sean Scully’s rhythmic bands and structural blocks can likewise be felt in James’s exploration of balance, structure, and emotional resonance, as he pushes the square beyond a static form into something dynamic, psychological, and deeply contemporary.
Drawing on the formal legacies of these art-historical figures, James honors the past while extending its language into the present. His paintings carry the rhythm, pressure, and psychological intensity of contemporary urban life—particularly the pace and dissonance of London—while remaining firmly rooted in abstraction’s ongoing conversation into space, structure, and perception. Ultimately, Dissecting the Square. Colours and Black by Alexander James asks what new possibilities might still emerge from painting’s most elemental form: the square.