Cameron Jamie
Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Cameron Jamie. Jamie is known for working in a wide range of media, creating films, sculptures, works on paper, and artist books that are united by an experimental approach to traditional materials and methods. This exhibition will present Jamie’s recent explorations in printmaking, as well as new ceramic masks and sculptures.
Jamie’s monotypes are the result of extensive experimentation with printmaking processes. The prints are richly layered with colorful ink washes, staccato pen lines, and the veiled form of a masked bird-like figure, renewing a familiar motif found throughout the artist’s paintings and books. Layering, erasure, working, and reworking is a generative process for Jamie, as artifacts of partially erased gestures activate the final image with records of the artist’s process.
This exhibition will also feature ceramic masks and abstract sculptures. Jamie’s ceramic sculptures are formed from organic, hand-molded shapes and pieces; through repeated firing and glazing, the structures are glossed in an animated surface pattern of swirling lava varnishes with spectacular richness. For the first time, Jamie will present his masks in a manner that allows one to view the interior of the ceramic piece, foregrounding and aligning the position of the viewer as that of the mask wearer. Jamie’s films and sculptures are often described as a form of anthropological investigation; with this new mode of presentation we are invited in not only as voyeurs of the artwork’s often hidden interior space, but also to empathize with the masked. The material exploration on display demonstrates the artist’s ability to traverse the conventional and experimental at once, re-imagining recognizable forms and expanding the discourse of ceramic and monotype.
Jamie’s new book, Front Lawn Funerals and Cemeteries, will be released at Printed Matter, Inc. (New York) on April 29, and a limited edition artist book titled KOPBF Book XIII will be available through Walther König in April.
Cameron Jamie was born in Los Angeles in 1969 and lives in Paris. His work has been presented in solo museum exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Zurich (2013) and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2006), traveling to the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Jamie has been featured in film festivals and major group exhibitions including the Berlin Biennial (2010), the Whitney Biennial (2006), the Venice Biennale (2005), and Let's Entertain/Au-dela du spectacle at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2000-2001); in September Jamie will participate in the 2015 Lyon Biennale. In 2008 Jamie was the first recipient of the Yanghyun Prize.