ART CITIES:Athens-Cameron Jamie
Cameron Jamie’s work created over the past 20 years, ranges through a wide range of media: performance, video, sculpture, installation, photography and drawing, including examples of investigation around the notion of portraiture, self-representation, and collective identity, many of which have never been shown together. The artist is considered a precise chronicler of American and thus European tradition and lifestyle.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Bernier-Eliades Gallery Archive
Cameron Jamie in his solo exhibition at Bernier-Eliades Gallery presents his new body of work, from ceramic sculptures and ink drawings to monotypes that explore the layer of the body as a territory of analysis and investigation. 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. The ceramic sculptures are a three-dimensional extension of his drawings. Just as the artist lets his ink trace abrupt landscapes and biomorphic lines on the paper, so he allows the sculptures to “Determine their own forms”. Born in 1969, raised in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and now living and working in Paris, Jamie has explored the dark underbelly of the American dream. The violence is a recurring subject in his work, a violence that appears to feature in every activity that the artist observes, from his native Los Angeles to Alpine villages in rural Austria. In “The New Life” (1996), the artist documents his own staged fight against an impersonator of Michael Jackson. In the well-known film “BB” (1998–2000), the violence is further explored as an amateur wrestling show performed in the backyard of a suburban home. Equally descriptive is the film “Kranky Klaus” (2002–2003), which portrays the annual ritual of Krampuslauf in Austria. On the night of Dec. 6, villagers congregate in homes to await a visit by a benign St. Nicholas bearing seasonal gifts. But they also are waiting anxiously for the Krampus, strange, masked, mythical beasts with shaggy coats and serious attitude. As St. Nicholas rewards the good, so the Krampus punish the bad. “Kranky Klaus” tracks a herd of Krampus as they work their way through the village, reaching the very limits ofacceptable intimidation. On the other hand “Massage the History” (2007–2009), offers another view of a marginal reality and presents a private performance by amateur dancers in their living rooms in Alabama.
Info: Bernier-Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou Street, Athens, Duration: 23/11/17-4/1/18, Days & hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-18:30, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.bernier-eliades.gr
