James Bouché

The Yeh Art Gallery is pleased to present The World Will End on January 26th, 2023, a solo exhibition by artist James Bouché, organized by artist and St. John’s University Adjunct Professor Ryan Syrell. Bouché’s The World Will End on January 26th, 2023 explores the ethics and aesthetics surrounding predictions of imminent end-times. Given our tremendous capacity for imagining possible futures, what does it mean to dedicate such energy to the embellishment of a final cataclysm, whether real or imagined, personal or global? Through sculptures, layered prints, and hanging fabric works, Bouché activates the optics of apocalypse while questioning their role in our actions or inactions.

“And now, we have no option. We can't say 'maybe' 'it's possible' 'it looks very probable...' No way! We have to say this is what the Bible teaches! This is fact! May 21, 2011 is the day of the Rapture, it is the day that Judgment Day begins...”

- Harold  Camping

“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period.”

- Harold Camping

We’ve been living in the “last days” for a very long time. We've interpreted prophecies, calculated and recalculated dates, looked for signs that our time is special and the world is worse than ever. It is much easier for us to face an apocalypse out of our control than to look ahead and make sustainable and equitable steps toward protecting the future. If the end is truly near, we have spent hundreds of years causing it; just to one day be able to say, “I knew this would happen.”

Artist Bio
James Bouché (b.1990) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from MICA in 2012 with a BFA  in Printmaking and  Book Arts. Recent exhibitions include Family History Center (Baltimore), Implicit Dimensions (Richmond), and On Human Limits (New York)

Curator Bio
Ryan Syrell is a New York-based painter and educator who also writes about art. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017, and his BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2006. Ryan teaches visual arts at St. John’s University.