Editor’s Word: Forward of Cameron Martin’s exhibition “Baseline,” on view at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins in New York via 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 includes 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, but it surely’s been behind my thoughts. I’m curious about placing types 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 currently, I’ve been desirous about different kinds of surrogates or stand-ins for gesture.
AS: Why do you need 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 among 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 have been derived from panorama pictures, and I considered them very a lot as photos. I modified issues up about ten years in the past, transferring towards what I believed was a extra summary strategy [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 may be. Do they learn that technique to you?
AS: I’m unsure I’d assume so if I simply noticed them on their very own, however I discover it humorous in the event 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 photographs stripped of signification, and in the event 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 trying askance, having your eyebrows up… possibly a sort of undoing from under.
CM: I feel that disposition produces a definite sort of portray. Each in my work and within the issues that I take a look at on this 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 “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 folks may say, “this jogs my memory of “x”, but when they’re requested, “do you assume that may be a image of that factor?” the reply is “no.”
AS: Yeah, that’s the place the thought of drollness comes via to me: it’s your sense of virtually 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 types, they’re doing one thing animated, though there’s a sort of non-disclosure about what they’re doing precisely, which is an odd mixture. Do you giggle while 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 possibly that amusement is what comes out of the juxtaposition of elements that don’t completely match. That’s a method a joke can function, when the elements 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 stated “nearly indicators” and now we’re speaking in regards to the “nearly comical.” Your collages—which I’m a fan of—have a complete totally 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 feel 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 believed I had finished 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 once I was portray photos of mountains and “nature.”
AS: If you have been portray “nature” did you assume you have 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 best way the setting has grow to be ideologically loaded. “Helpful” is a tall order, although.
AS: Was your transfer to abstraction liberating, then? As a result of it amplified the sort of estrangement of picture-to-meaning that you simply’re into?
CM: I don’t assume an image’s that means is ever fully simple. After 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 feel 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 sides of lower 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 obvious. However after all, that IS a paradox.
CM: I would like them to have the impact of feeling like they only appeared on the canvas.
AS: Precisely. In your work it’s nearly inconceivable to see what occurred earlier than, or how one thing obtained 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 feel 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 belongings you’re describing that we’d body as embodiment, I’m trying to work in opposition to 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 sort of work that’s not certain 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… possibly you’re refusing that sort of drama?
CM: If you discuss refusal I take into consideration Freud’s thought of negation, which permits for an perception into what’s repressed. I’d say we reside in a state of omnipresent tragedy, so that’s inherently a part of each gesture we make. I ponder, 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 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 good friend Ulrike Müller stated this attention-grabbing factor to me not too long ago, that generally we don’t paint the world we reside in, however as an alternative paint the world that we need 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 relies on a sort 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, nearly this festive high quality of issues transferring round, dancing, defying gravity, and naturally opticality. However I suppose I’m making an attempt to establish this type of different feeling that I feel you goal 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 feel that after years of creating work that was fairly somber, once 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 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 potential directly, at a time when there’s a whole lot of binary considering pervading every little thing from artwork to politics.
