The Half Reach of J.L.B.
2003
Installation, 670 x 56 cm.
Materials: gold lamé
Collection: Courtesy Annie Gentils Gallery.
This work is an homage to the 'Great James Lee Byars'. His performances, in which he would appear in a gold lamé suit – made to measure by Mr North South in New York – were an important aspect to Webb’s work. The sleeves of the suit would always be much longer than normal, covering the artist's hands putting them beyond use, rendering the figure asocial, inept (the antithesis of the artist) and in the domain of the untouchable monarch. In the piece we also find a reference to the 'dichotomy paradox' of Zeno of Elea, as found in Aristotle's Physics: "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal." Hence, the work can be interpreted as a micro-section or macro-section of the reach in motion, and therefore, ultimately it proposes that the reach of Byars is infinite.
