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  • Warnings & Instructions (Fun Raft of Medusa), 2010, 9 x 12 x 14 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • Warnings & Instructions
    Warnings & Instructions is a site-specific installation that imagines people adapting to the aftermath of an unspecified disaster. Rather than depicting catastrophe itself, the work focuses on the quiet ingenuity that emerges when familiar systems, routines, and expectations no longer provide clear direction.

    Objects and environments associated with danger gradually become places of exploration, play, and improvisation. The same forms can be read as threatening or inviting depending on how they are approached, suggesting that survival depends not only on physical endurance but also on the ability to reinterpret one's surroundings. The installation proposes that common sense is not simply obedience to established rules but the capacity to respond thoughtfully when those rules are no longer sufficient. Video and sound works embedded throughout the installation extend this environment, unfolding alongside the sculptural elements as fragments of observation, memory, and atmosphere.

    Based on the image of people stranded yet determined to make the best of an impossible situation, Warnings & Instructions reflects on the resilience of ordinary people confronted with uncertainty. Rather than asking how disaster changes us, the installation asks whether play, curiosity, and adaptation are among the first signs that recovery has already begun.
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions entrance wall installation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions (Airplane)installation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions (Airplane) 2010, 17 x 45 x 75 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • IMG_1422r_1 Warnings & Instructions (Airplane interior with monitors), 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint, video with sound
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint, video and projection with soundinstallation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint, video and projection with sound
  • James Gilbert Warnings and Instructions (detail) Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • IMG_1395r_1 Warnings & Instructions (life vest), 2010, 30 x 26 x 5 inches, plastic, thread, plexi-glass
  • IMG_1794_2 Warnings & Instructions (black box with video projection), 2010, metal, paint, electronics, video with sound
  • Gilbert-67_1 Warnings & Instructions (black box detail), 2010, 7 x 6 x 9 inches, metal, paint, electronics, video
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions (Fun Raft of Medusa) installation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions (Fun Raft of Medusa), 2010, 9 x 12 x 14 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • James Gilbert Warnings and Instructions installation with life vest Warnings & Instructions (detail of life raft #2), 2010, 9 x 10 x 12 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions (life raft #2)installation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions (life raft #2), 2010, 9 x 10 x 12 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • IMG_2147_1 Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • James Gilbert Warnings & Instructions wing
    Warnings & Instructions (airplane wing), 2010, 17 x 6 x 1 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
    James Gilbert Warnings and Instructions wing detail
    Warnings & Instructions (airplane wing detail), 2010, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • James Gilbert Warnings and Instructions nose w video installation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint, video with sound
  • James Gilbert Warnings and Instructions 2 boats wall  projectioninstallation Dallas Contemporary Warnings & Instructions, 2010, dimensions variable, plastic, thread, wood, paint, video projection with sound
  • Warnings & Instructions Part I, 2010, video with sound, running time 8:54
  • Warnings & Instructions Part II, 2010, video with sound, running time 7:45
  • Warnings & Instructions, main cabin, 2010, video with sound, running time 3:28
  • Warnings & Instructions, swimming, 2010, video with sound, running time 4:55
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  • Worker (detail) 2011, 10 x 20 x 60 feet, found fabric
  • Worker
    Worker is a site-specific installation about how individual lives disappear within systems of industrial production. Constructed entirely from discarded clothing, accumulated textiles transform into hunched human figures whose identities become inseparable from the products they manufacture.

    Clothing becomes body, architecture, and commodity at once, collapsing distinctions between worker, workplace, and consumer product. The same material forms the laborers, the environment surrounding them, and the goods moving through it, suggesting a system in which people and objects become increasingly interchangeable. Audio and video surveillance extend this condition, recording labor while revealing little about the individuals being observed.

    Worker considers how systems preserve the visibility of products more carefully than the histories of the people whose labor made them possible. Rather than documenting a particular workforce, the installation asks what remains when the object survives but the person who made it is forgotten.
  • Worker (detail) 2011, 10 x 20 x 60 feet, found fabric
  • 2011.01.07_0162HR Worker (hallway view detail), 2011, dimensions variable, found fabric
  • worker 5video James Gilbert Worker, 2011, dimensions variable, found fabric, video projection with sound, running time 5:54 looped
  • Worker Gilbert_worker4 Worker (hallway view), 2011, dimensions variable, found fabric
  • 2011.01.07_0175HR
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, dimensions variable, found fabric
    Worker 2011.01.07_0176HR
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, dimensions variable, found fabric
  • Worker Gilbert_w2
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, 73 x 33 x 28 inches, found fabric
    Worker Gilbert_w6
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, 74 x 33 x 32inches, found fabric
  • Worker w1jamesgilbert
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, 72 x 33 x 28 inches, found fabric
    Worker Gilbert_w8
    Worker (figure detail), 2011, 72 x 33 x 28 inches, found fabric
  • Worker, 2011, video projection and sound, running time 5:54, looped
  • Time Lapse Construction and Interview with James Gilbert
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  • A Gentle Sort of Restlessness, 2025, Wood, stain, ink, metal, and wax, 18 × 27 × 19 inches
  • How Much Earth For Sale?, 2022, Earth, concrete, wood, metal, paint, 11 × 14 × 6 feet
  • Heirloom, 2023, Wood, stain, paint, wax, metal, C-clamps, antique furniture, 75 × 95 × 47 inches
  • Arrogance & Evidence, 2019, vinyl, wood, rope, nature
  • Truth and Reason, 2017, wood, paint, pigmented wax, 9 x 28 x 10inches
  • A Historic Point of Interest and Other Landmarks, 2016 (installation view) hand-dyed canvas, wood, paint, marble, dimensions variable
  • There's Fragility in Protecting What You Have, 2016, wood, varnish, wax, acrylic paint, 26 x 44 x 11 inches
  • Destroyed #1 by James Gilbert
  • One Blank Round (detail), 2015, 8x8x8 feet, hand-dyed canvas, polyester rope, wood, paint, metal
  • 1968, 2013, 35 x 92 x 40 inches, hydrocal, pigment, wax, wood, varnish
  • Rough Trader, 2012 James Gilbert
  • My Pervy Bone, 2013, 8 1/4 x 18 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches, found chewed bone, neon, wood, varnish, electronics
  • WrestlingShoes2_2741 James Gilbert artist performance Dallas Contemporary
  • Social Foreclosure 1_1276_james_gilbert
  • Warnings & Instructions (Fun Raft of Medusa), 2010, 9 x 12 x 14 feet, plastic, thread, wood, paint
  • Worker (detail) 2011, 10 x 20 x 60 feet, found fabric
  • james gilbert
  • ClothesHomePage9437_467.m James Gilbert