Monotypes

kamel mennour is pleased to present 9 recent Monotypes, by the American artist Cameron Jamie at the gallery.

– no matter what the semi-abstract figures in Cameron Jamie’s work resemble, they invariably convey a type of otherworldly presence. This sense comes across in all of the media the artist employs: ceramic and wooden sculptures, drawings, graphic prints, photographs, films, artist books and music productions.
His drawings and monotypes form the foundation of his oeuvre, which has continued to develop its own, very specific artistic vernacular over the course of more than twenty-five years.
The oeuvre’s basic tenor suggests identity as the basis for human existence. Time and again, Jamie has explored marginal realities and mysterious rituals, which refer to the hidden faces in our society. He thereby occupies a position where he immerses
himself in subcultures that partially have shaped him. These worlds’ artistic transformation is, however, never carried out in a calculated way – Jamie’s form-finding process is spontaneous and psychologically inspired. The result is deeply personal and, at once, there is the sense that a magical, primitive atmosphere has
been unleashed. It is about conditions of being and consciousness rather than concrete semantic contexts.
This approach comes across in a particularly direct manner in his drawings. There is something primary, even primal for Jamie in the act of drawing in free, immediate gestures, hearkening back to humanity’s earliest, pre-lingual markings: signs that
indicate traces of carrying and expressing deeper meanings and messages. The source of the abstract, figural and floral subjects of interpenetrated forms remains undetermined: a phenomenon that lends Jamie’s work a beautifully unique and timeless energy.
Jamie’s automatic sketches often emerge from a layering process on paper with black inks, pastels, colored pencils, and watercolors. He is constantly experimenting with methods of the printmaking processes such as the monotype. Each of his unique monotype creations holds untold layers of colors and lines that render visible the shadow of procedural steps – a characteristic that Jamie’s process of creation reflects in general. The alchemical cycle of construction and deconstruction, erasure, overwriting,destruction and re-implementation is an essential feature inherent in his work.

© Gesine Borcherdt, written at the occasion of the exhibition at CAPRI, 2017