Guest curated by Larissa Kolesnikova, Powers of Ten is the first U.S. solo museum exhibition by light and media artist James Clar. Also marking his Los Angeles debut, this mid-career retrospective brings together a selection of works from 2011 to 2024, highlighting Clar’s mastery of video and light systems to examine how technology informs our perception of the natural world. These explorations are grounded in Clar’s film background and his deep appreciation of the California Light and Space movement. The exhibition features works created during Clar’s time living in Dubai, New York, Tokyo, and his current residency in Manila, as well as work made in Los Angeles specifically for this exhibition.
The exhibition’s title, Powers of Ten, references the groundbreaking 1977 short film by Charles and Ray Eames, which explored the relationship between scale and reality using cutting-edge technology of the time. This question is at the heart of Clar’s practice: How do we quantify reality, and how does technology shape our experience of it?
Alongside earlier technology based works, Clar will exhibit new cyanotype works created through the first-ever collaboration between the Eames Foundation and a contemporary artist, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Eames House. On site at the house, Clar produced a series of banners with light filtered through the studio windows; the cyanotype technique offered an ideal medium to capture the essence and spirit of the house—a place where Charles and Ray lived and created. The colors and movements captured on the cyanotypes vary based on exposure length and weather conditions, creating a harmonious process integrated with the natural surroundings and the house itself, echoing the Eames’ work/play philosophy.
Reflecting on this landmark project, Eames Foundation executive director Lucia Atwood shares, "James’s technology based work felt particularly appropriate for our first contemporary artist collaboration, given an underlying joy shared with Charles and Ray’s media explorations. Here at Eames House, he chose to use natural light to create cyanotypes looking out the steel mullions of the windows, to capture an impressionistic spirit of place.”
