Cameron Hayes
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
February 23 – March 31, 2001
The Feldman Gallery will exhibit paintings by Cameron Hayes, a young Australian artist whose work presents bizarre, allegorical fictions. His sumptuously chaotic compositions display a multitude of hyper-realistic details that cover a vast field. The ribald subject matter -- perversions, grotesqueries, and cartoonish characters -- evokes the diverse phantasmagoric worlds of Bosch, Bruegel, and Daumier. Referencing Pop culture, he addresses historical and current issues with a visual satire that is laced with black humor and infused with a "Down Under" brashness.
Maintaining that art should excite the imagination, since "only imagination can free you from being pushed around by the nature inside you," Cameron Hayes renounces emotional painting. "People who paint about their emotional inner self paint boring paintings. They are usually thickly painted and are brown and red. They look like burnt lasagna. A good work of art is less about the ideas of the artist than the ideas it can create in the people who look at it."
Each painting is accompanied by a short text, written by the artist in a faux simplistic style. Some of the paintings included in the exhibition are:
"Blind and deaf school the day talkie films" were invented presupposes the integration of the deaf population into mainstream culture during the silent film era, and their replacement by the blind with the advent of the talkies. On that day, the two groups exchange possessions, symbolic of their changing status.
"Bonnie and Clyde during a petrol strike" celebrates "people who know they are unique but can't do anything about it," and depicts bank robbers using public transportation, the digging up of graves, and a parrot plague.
"From the air we all felt sorry for the sick and starving" contrasts feelings of empathy from afar with antipathy in proximity, an insight inspired by a plane flying over Africa and its subsequent crash.
"In 1977 Cameron Hooker picked up a hitchhiker", 19 year-old Colleen Stan tells a story of female enslavement and unspeakable acts, in order to understand the victimizer.
"Today hardly anyone could forget yesterday" refers to the Australian national character – Whites who bring testimonials from England stating that they have been charming, funny, and desirable company in the past, sparing them the energy of actually trying to be so in the present.
Cameron Hayes' work was included in the group exhibition, Sampling, at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1999. A recipient of numerous prizes, Cameron Hayes has exhibited in Australia, including the prestigious Moët and Chandon Touring Exhibition. He was born in Sydney in 1969 and received his Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) from the R.M.I.T., Melbourne, in 1992. He currently lives and works in Melbourne.
RONALD FELDMAN FINE ARTS
31 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10013
