The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will be bringing the New York-based artist James Perkins’ “post-totem” works indoors for Perkins’ first museum exhibition from Sept. 20 to Feb. 15, 2026.

“James Perkins | Burying Painting” highlights the artist’s approach to nature as a collaborator in his process-based land art: minimalist sculptures made from silk, wood and stone and partially buried outside, where they are exposed to everything from hurricane winds, rain and sea salt to soil, sun and, yes, wildlife.

Perkins leaves the textile-wrapped structures semi-exposed in the ground for months or years, using the landscape as his painting palette. Once the outdoor duration is finished, the works are “harvested” from the land and re-stretched onto frames to create painting-like “post-totem” works with shifting color fields and varied textures.

Perkins said the term “post-totem” refers to his philosophy on totemic structures that denote one’s “tribe,” from how someone dresses to how they speak. The structures reference symbolic objects that express individual and collective identity.

His philosophy challenges human-nature relationships by symbolically neutralizing systems that disconnect us from the natural world and each other. The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition will feature floor and wall works shaped by two distinct environments: a beach on Fire Island, New York, near Perkins’ primary studio and the Sonoran Desert at Scottsdale’s Cattle Track Arts Compound.

For more information, visit www.SMoCA.org.