William Lamson:

An Action For the Delaware

William Lamson: An Action for the Delaware featured a film in which the artist seemingly stands on the surface of the Delaware River. As the camera comes closer, we see Lamson's struggle to steady himself on a flotation device against the river's current. The challenge of balancing himself while also trying to submerge his support structure underwater becomes the focus of the work.

Lamson’s Action can be seen as a metaphor for the creative process, moving between the fiction of his position and the reveal of how the illusion is created. At first, he succeeds in convincing us that he is doing the impossible – standing on water – but then slowly he reveals the mechanism behind his visual trick. Quietly perched atop the current, there is a momentary suspension of belief that the artist is master over this natural force. Ultimately, however, he reveals how dominant the environment is and how helpless he is to control it.

William Lamson was born in 1977 in Arlington County, Virginia. He earned his MFA from Bard College, New York and teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program and at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Lamson’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum; Moscow Biennial, Russia; MOMA P.S.1., New York; Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has appeared in ArtForum, Frieze, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Village Voice. He lives and works in Brooklyn.