Editor’s Notice: Forward of Cameron Martin’s exhibition “Baseline,” on view at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins in New York by means of 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 occasions 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 quite than embrace it. I wouldn’t name that the subject material of the work precisely, however it’s been at the back of my thoughts. I’m curious about placing kinds collectively that don’t essentially make sense in the identical house, 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 these days, I’ve been desirous about other forms 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 and put the brushstroke in aid, and to displace a number of the baggage that comes with a sure form of mark.
AS: So are they PICTURES?
CM: Beginning within the late ’90s, I made graphic work that had been derived from panorama pictures, and I considered them very a lot as footage. I modified issues up about ten years in the past, transferring towards what I assumed was a extra summary method [turning toward brushstrokes and shapes]. However I’ve come to grasp 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 could be. Do they learn that option to you?
AS: I’m undecided I’d suppose so if I simply noticed them on their very own, however I discover it humorous if you happen to make this declare for them as “footage,” since your work are form of like indicators stripped of that means, or footage stripped of background and foreground, or photographs stripped of signification, and if you happen to attempt to pin any of those classes to them they appear to wriggle away. I suppose I discover that kind of droll… “droll” versus “witty,” within the sense that witty is sort of a play on phrases, whereas droll is like an angle of trying askance, having your eyebrows up… possibly a form of undoing from under.
CM: I believe that disposition produces a definite form of portray. Each in my work and within the issues that I have a look at on the planet—whether or not it’s a design ingredient from a bank card advert within the subway or one thing from artwork historical past—I’m desirous about what I name “virtually 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 means of 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 form of non-disclosure about what they’re doing precisely, which is a wierd mixture. Do you chortle once you end one?
CM: I wouldn’t say that I chuckle out loud, however I might be amused by issues that occur inside the work. And possibly that amusement is what comes out of the juxtaposition of components that don’t completely match. That’s a technique a joke can function, when the components don’t fairly make sense, and issues are simply off sufficient that you just may expertise humor, if not full-on laughter.
Cameron Martin: Graphic, 2025.
© Cameron Martin, courtesy Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York
AS: You stated “virtually indicators” and now we’re speaking in regards to the “virtually comical.” Your collages—which I’m a fan of—have a complete totally different form 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 really non-semiotic work.
CM: I assumed I had performed that, however I wasn’t capable of get as far-off from signifiers as I imagined. I really feel generally like I’m the final champion of semiotics: it’s nonetheless fueling the issues that I’m making, although possibly extra obliquely than it was after I was portray footage of mountains and “nature.”
AS: Once you had been portray “nature” did you suppose you had been doing one thing political? Or one thing helpful?
CM: I used to be desirous about our mediated relationship to the pure world, and the way in which the setting has turn into ideologically loaded. “Helpful” is a tall order, although.
AS: Was your transfer to abstraction liberating, then? As a result of it amplified the form of estrangement of picture-to-meaning that you just’re into?
CM: I don’t suppose an image’s that means is ever fully simple. Once I was addressing panorama it was at all times with an eye fixed in direction of placing the time period in parallax. I used to be desirous 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 liberating.
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 reduce layers. However your drive within the work is remarkably towards a no-body, a non-embodied house the place the optical prevails over the bodily. There’s no sense of bodily resistance, no remnant, hint, stain, or grain is clear. However after all, that IS a paradox.
CM: I need them to have the impact of feeling like they only appeared on the canvas.
AS: Precisely. In your work it’s virtually unattainable to see what occurred earlier than, or how one thing bought there. They seem, and we have a look at them. However we who’ve our bodies, we will’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 prime 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’d body as embodiment, I’m trying 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 consider tragedy? You’re describing a form of work that’s not certain up with agonistic manufacturing. However is there nonetheless a form of “tragic” sense in work that’s imagined to be headed for some form of instability, or… possibly you’re refusing that form of drama?
CM: Once you speak about refusal I take into consideration Freud’s concept of negation, which permits for an perception into what’s repressed. I’d say we dwell 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 might be pointing to as a negation of tragedy isn’t an try at repressing the tragedy that’s in every single place.
AS: Am I doing that or are you? (LOL) The work can be actually asking “how far you may go with out the physique and nonetheless give issues a physique?”
CM: Our mutual pal Ulrike Müller stated this attention-grabbing factor to me just lately, that generally we don’t paint the world we dwell in, however as an alternative paint the world that we wish to dwell in.
AS: That’s form 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 relies on a form of readability and lightness, versus being all snarled, 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, virtually this festive high quality of issues transferring round, dancing, defying gravity, and naturally opticality. However I suppose I’m attempting to determine this sort of different feeling that I believe you purpose for on the identical time. Perhaps it’s just like the smile of the Cheshire cat… you’re making one thing that’s extra not sure than it appears to be like….
CM: I believe that after years of constructing work that was fairly somber, after I made the pivot to abstraction I felt a want for the work to have a special have an effect on. I wouldn’t say “festive” (that form of makes me cringe) however I agree with you that lightness and a definite relationship to gravity are at play. On the identical time, the work is proposing a lack of fixity, an openness to a number of meanings being doable directly, at a time when there may be loads of binary pondering pervading every little thing from artwork to politics.
