The very talented Latvian film maker Uldis Gabriels recently visited the studio and wrote this beautiful piece about it.
"Worth Every Drop of Sweat: Gaucín’s Steepest Walk Leads to Its Deepest Art
There is one more thing you must do in Gaucín — especially during the Open Art Studios weekend — and that is to walk down to the finca and studio of Jim Rattenbury.
Nestled just beyond the village’s whitewashed edge, Jim’s space isn’t merely a studio. It’s a kind of metaphysical field, where time seems to pause mid-step, where sculpture becomes suggestion. At first glance, his works appear as serene figures, calm compositions of color and form. But stand still long enough — truly look — and something shifts.
His sculptures do not move, but they demand movement.
You see, from a physical point of view, any artwork can be reduced to frame and material — plaster, rusted metal, textured stone. But what lives inside Jim’s sculptures is not just form. It’s motion. It’s philosophy. It’s the split-second between thought and action, between presence and transformation.
The elliptical shapes, broken stairways, circular rhythms, and suspended gestures evoke something beyond the visible. They awaken a strange urgency in the viewer: the need to complete the movement the artwork has only begun. One sculpture, featuring a staircase leading nowhere, left me restless — my brain, uninvited, trying to finish its ascent, to imagine what lay beyond the frame. Another piece, with a mask twisted inside out, asked me whether identity is ever stable, or just a performance in orbit.
There’s something almost absurd about the way your perception collaborates with the piece — a dance you didn’t realize you were part of.
And that’s what sets Jim’s work apart. He doesn’t just sculpt bodies or objects. He sculpts moments. He sculpts the idea of time itself — not as a ticking clock, but as a state of tension, movement paused, motion trapped mid-breath.
So go. Walk down into the campo. Step into this field of still time. And see what your own mind does when art doesn’t just speak — but moves.”