Composed of industrial and found materials, the uncanny installations of James Brendan Williams evoke common, yet rarely noticed, components of the built environment. Provisional structures, street signs, and cast-off objects are brought from the periphery to the center in this emerging artist’s vision. In a process he describes as “uncoding,” Williams infuses these everyday objects with new resonances that are at once beautiful, humorous, and disquieting. Through his cross-media practice, Williams also pushes at the boundaries between the handmade and mass-produced, natural and artificial, art and “non-art” materials. Stripped of fixed meaning, the work reflects and amplifies the wonder and absurdity of the changing world around us.

Curated by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the HIGH Museum of Art Atlanta