Editor’s Word: Forward of Cameron Martin’s exhibition “Baseline,” on view at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins in New York by October 11, the artist sat down with fellow painter Amy Sillman. The 2 mentioned semiotics and abstraction—and in addition what humour and tragedy can imply and do in instances like these.
Amy Sillman: Can you start by speaking about the way you made these new work, and the way they differ from earlier works?
Cameron Martin: We live on this time that entails a lot paradox and contradiction, and it’s tempting to run from that somewhat than embrace it. I wouldn’t name that the subject material of the work precisely, nevertheless it’s been behind my thoughts. I’m enthusiastic about placing kinds collectively that don’t essentially make sense in the identical area, after which exploring what will get produced. In my final present at Sikkema [in 2022], a number of work had these articulated brushstrokes—graphic representations of gesture—however recently, I’ve been serious about different kinds of surrogates or stand-ins for gesture.
AS: Why do you wish to make a stand in for a gesture? Isn’t that what illustration is?
CM: In a means, sure. It’s an try to put the brushstroke in aid, and to displace a number of the baggage that comes with a sure sort of mark.
AS: So are they PICTURES?
CM: Beginning within the late ’90s, I made graphic work that had been derived from panorama images, and I considered them very a lot as photos. I modified issues up about ten years in the past, transferring towards what I assumed was a extra summary strategy [turning toward brushstrokes and shapes]. However I’ve come to know that each portray I make nonetheless has the logic of a picture taking part in with graphics and indicators and grids.
Cameron Martin: Graphic, 2025.
© Cameron Martin, courtesy Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York
AS: Are they humorous? Do you consider them as droll?
CM: They is perhaps. Do they learn that technique to you?
AS: I’m undecided I’d suppose so if I simply noticed them on their very own, however I discover it humorous in case you make this declare for them as “photos,” since your work are sort of like indicators stripped of that means, or photos stripped of background and foreground, or pictures stripped of signification, and in case you attempt to pin any of those classes to them they appear to wriggle away. I suppose I discover that form of droll… “droll” versus “witty,” within the sense that witty is sort of a play on phrases, whereas droll is like an perspective of wanting askance, having your eyebrows up… perhaps a sort of undoing from under.
CM: I believe that disposition produces a definite sort of portray. Each in my work and within the issues that I take a look at on the planet—whether or not it’s a design factor from a bank card advert within the subway or one thing from artwork historical past—I’m serious about what I name “nearly indicators,” the place the signifier and the signified don’t fairly add up. That’s my model of abstraction. It permits for associative reads, the place individuals may say, “this jogs my memory of “x”, but when they’re requested, “do you suppose that could be a image of that factor?” the reply is “no.”
AS: Yeah, that’s the place the thought of drollness comes by to me: it’s your sense of just about deadpan humor, a barely indirect relationship to issues. However your work’s not visually deadpan; visually, it’s like a baroque graphic. These ribbon-like kinds, they’re doing one thing animated, though there’s a sort of non-disclosure about what they’re doing precisely, which is a wierd mixture. Do you chuckle whenever you end one?
CM: I wouldn’t say that I chuckle out loud, however I might be amused by issues that occur throughout the work. And perhaps that amusement is what comes out of the juxtaposition of components that don’t completely match. That’s a method a joke can function, when the components don’t fairly make sense, and issues are simply off sufficient that you simply may expertise humor, if not full-on laughter.
Cameron Martin: Graphic, 2025.
© Cameron Martin, courtesy Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York
AS: You mentioned “nearly indicators” and now we’re speaking concerning the “nearly comical.” Your collages—which I’m a fan of—have an entire completely different sort of have an effect on. They’re animated, however not humorous, whereas the work have a stilled high quality, or a paradoxical scenario of stillness and movement. I like seeing them collectively as a result of I believe that the collages give this sense of being totally bodily, the place the opticality and smoothness of the work makes them a bit “different” to the bodily. I really feel like as quickly as you began making quote-unquote abstraction, it’s truly non-semiotic work.
CM: I assumed I had carried out that, however I wasn’t capable of get as distant from signifiers as I imagined. I really feel typically like I’m the final champion of semiotics: it’s nonetheless fueling the issues that I’m making, although perhaps extra obliquely than it was after I was portray photos of mountains and “nature.”
AS: Whenever you had been portray “nature” did you suppose you had been doing one thing political? Or one thing helpful?
CM: I used to be serious about our mediated relationship to the pure world, and the way in which the setting has turn out to be ideologically loaded. “Helpful” is a tall order, although.
AS: Was your transfer to abstraction releasing, then? As a result of it amplified the sort of estrangement of picture-to-meaning that you simply’re into?
CM: I don’t suppose an image’s that means is ever fully simple. After I was addressing panorama it was at all times with a watch in the direction of placing the time period in parallax. I used to be serious about what sorts of assumptions get made round pure imagery. However in some methods, abstraction extra readily permits for a polyvalency of that means. I discover that thrilling, and I suppose releasing.
AS: I believe your collages are extra natural than your work. They make us conscious that they’re being MADE, they’re palpable. If I ran my finger over them I’d really feel a catch, the perimeters of lower layers. However your drive within the work is remarkably towards a no-body, a non-embodied area the place the optical prevails over the bodily. There’s no sense of bodily resistance, no remnant, hint, stain, or grain is obvious. However in fact, that IS a paradox.
CM: I need them to have the impact of feeling like they simply appeared on the canvas.
AS: Precisely. In your work it’s nearly not possible to see what occurred earlier than, or how one thing bought there. They seem, and we take a look at them. However we who’ve our bodies, we are able to’t not have histories, residue, leftovers, remnants. Your work are stripped of this, purposefully. They’re clear. However then your collages are barely tingling with this tiny embodiment…
CM: On high of that, the collages have extra concrete referents. The parts clearly come from someplace. I believe that lack of tactility within the work outcomes from having had a really theory-heavy upbringing as an artist. I’ve at all times had an ambivalent and even skeptical disposition towards portray. With all of the stuff you’re describing that we would body as embodiment, I’m making an attempt to work towards them as stipulations for what constitutes a portray, to attempt to hassle the class a bit.
Cameron Martin: Graphic, 2025.
© Cameron Martin, courtesy Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York
AS: They appear to have no previous, however they’ve a future in that means. What do you concentrate on tragedy? You’re describing a sort of work that’s not sure up with agonistic manufacturing. However is there nonetheless a sort of “tragic” sense in work that’s imagined to be headed for some sort of instability, or… perhaps you’re refusing that sort of drama?
CM: Whenever you speak about refusal I take into consideration Freud’s thought of negation, which permits for an perception into what’s repressed. I might say we reside in a state of omnipresent tragedy, so that’s inherently a part of each gesture we make. I’m wondering, then, psychoanalyzing myself, whether or not what you’re pointing to as a negation of tragedy isn’t an try at repressing the tragedy that’s all over the place.
AS: Am I doing that or are you? (LOL) The work can also be actually asking “how far you’ll be able to go with out the physique and nonetheless give issues a physique?”
CM: Our mutual pal Ulrike Müller mentioned this attention-grabbing factor to me lately, that typically we don’t paint the world we reside in, however as a substitute paint the world that we wish to reside in.
AS: That’s sort of an idealist factor, isn’t it? It jogs my memory of Agnes Martin’s description. of the “classical,” versus the romantic. For her, classical work is predicated on a sort of readability and lightness, versus being all tangled up, self-descriptive, and expressionist. However her work might be fairly dry, with out humor in a means. Lightness sure, humor no. Your work even have this sense of lightness, nearly this festive high quality of issues transferring round, dancing, defying gravity, and naturally opticality. However I suppose I’m attempting to establish this sort of different feeling that I believe you purpose for on the similar time. Perhaps it’s just like the smile of the Cheshire cat… you’re making one thing that’s extra uncertain than it seems to be….
CM: I believe that after years of creating work that was fairly somber, after I made the pivot to abstraction I felt a want for the work to have a unique have an effect on. I wouldn’t say “festive” (that sort of makes me cringe) however I agree with you that lightness and a definite relationship to gravity are at play. On the similar time, the work is proposing a lack of fixity, an openness to a number of meanings being doable without delay, at a time when there’s lots of binary pondering pervading every little thing from artwork to politics.
