Louis Cameron: Pop Secret
I-20 Gallery, New York
January 22 – March 12, 2005
I-20 presents Pop Secret, the first New York solo exhibition of Louis Cameron. The works in Pop Secret test color-coded consumer product identities by abstracting images that are familiar to us. The exhibition consists of two suites of paintings, collages, and a video.
In the first suite, the Puzzle Paintings, the colors are extracted from products and painted on jigsaw puzzle pieces. The colors are selected by chance and the quantity by the proportion of color used in the original product. When assembled the die cut pattern of the jigsaw puzzle is in the foreground and the color composition is the result of the selection process. Even after this abstraction process the product identity, so engrained on our minds, is still recognizable. Titles in this suite include “Mountain Dew,” “Newport,” and “Reynolds Wrap.”
Unlike the Puzzle Paintings, the second suite of works called Color Bar Paintings are copies of ready-made color extractions. These are the squares and circles of color one finds on the inside flaps of cereal boxes and other products. In addition to testing product color identity the paintings pose rhetorical questions to minimal paintings of the past such as “Is the destiny of minimal painting and its aesthetic to calibrate color for consumer products?” and “After radical reduction in form and content is minimal art just another consumer product?” Titles include “Doublemint” and “Crest.”
The collages shown at I-20 are made from product boxes and packaging cut into grids and reassembled by chance to the original size of the box. The resulting images look like sliding block puzzles that have been scrambled.
Finally, Louis Cameron debuts his first video entitled “Universal.” “Universal” is an animated barcode composed of hundreds of barcodes, mostly collected from the artist’s loft, morphing into one another. The lines in “Universal” move in a hypnotic rhythm like window blinds blowing in the wind while alluding to our massive consumption.
In 2005, Louis Cameron’s work will be featured in the 1st Moscow Biennale and in Extreme Abstraction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. His work has been featured in Freestyle at The Studio Museum in Harlem; Open House at the Brooklyn Museum,; and Buy American at Chez Valentin in Paris. Cameron has completed a residency at The Studio Museum of Harlem in 2003, and lives and works.
I-20 GALLERY
529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
www.i-20.com
