Close your eyes, and the neon-bright afterimage of your surroundings will linger in the blackness of your eyelids. Now multiply those shapes and fit them into precise geometric proportions, and you’ll have something like the new exhibition by James Marshall (also known by his alias, Dalek, a name taken from the menacing robots of British sci-fi favorite “Doctor Who”).
His exhibit, “Prism Break,” is a walk-through installation that takes over the Hurley SPACE Gallery in Costa Mesa, CA. It’s made from triangular spires, striped with gradients of color, that jut out from the black floor, almost touching a ceiling covered in a storm of silver, and walls filled with tessellating, striped diamonds. “The idea for me was to try to create an environment for the first time, as opposed to just doing paintings,” Dalek says, calmly, on the phone from California.
The experience is augmented by the “4D” glasses viewers can wear, which bring a hazy motion to the exhibit. “Without the glasses, it’s very hard edged and very linear, but when you put the glasses on, it sort of takes it into that dream world,” he explains. The exhibit debuted in conjunction with Hurley’s Phantom 4D boardshorts, for which Marshall designed the art – an optically stimulating spectrum reminiscent of “Prism Break.”
If you track Dalek’s work back a few years, you can see influences of contemporary Japanese art, and it’s clear why – he went to high school on a military base in Japan, and later worked with Takashi Murakami. His earlier works featured “Space Monkey,” a mouse-eared creature with anime eyes that became less visible as his art became more abstract. His most current work features colorful, repeating, geometric shapes.
Though his art could be categorized by its influences, or by its appearance, Dalek eschews those limits in favor of connecting with viewers on a more organic level. “The thing I like is when there are no boundaries,” he says. “People can come in and engage with [my work] in a way that makes sense to their life.”
“Prism Break” runs until Sept. 30 at the the Hurley SPACE Gallery, 1945 Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa.
- Eric Allen
