WHATIFTHEWORLD is proud to announce the opening of Cameron Platters new solo exhibition Thank You.
Everyday I’m drawing.
These works are hard, and bright, and off centre. Also funny, and soft, and smudgy. They don’t make sense, they shout and they whisper. Like life, they’re messy. I love how simple, primitive and direct pastels and pencils are. Just a stick of ready-to-go colour and a piece of paper. No AI, no ChatGPT, no Elon Musk. They’re ultra handmade primitive artefacts covered in my fingerprints.
These drawings were made in my studio, under my house, in the sub-topical suburbs of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, but they began during a stay in Los Angeles last year, where I happened upon an unused box of pastels. Encountering these bright pigment sticks I started using them like charcoal, but they soon turned into something else completely- I found a happy-warm-fuzzy place, a missing link somewhere between drawing and painting. They fuse drawing’s all-u-can-eat immediacy and lightness of touch with the depth and smack of a painting. I’ve found I’m happiest when I’m subverting a traditional medium- and pastels, with their Sunday painter and petrol-station-gift-card connotations certainly ticks that box.
They turned out to be unconscious notes-to-self of the world, synthesised from travel; real, imaginary and online. They’re drawn from Durban’s vibrant downtown grime, the loneliness of a potholed and billboarded Los Angeles freeway at dusk, the noisy desert desolation of a trip out to Vegas, the rasp of a half-dinosaur hadida, a visit to Makro and Costco, finding oneself (spiritually) in a strip mall business park, the vacuum-packed feeling of an airport departure gate, the intimacy of a family dinner at home while The Muppets Most Wanted plays in the background. They’re drawing as seeing and thinking; ready-to-go colour sticks as an extension of my brain-eye-hand connection, and a central nervous system made visible. Drawing as the subconscious, as therapy, as meditation, as investigation. Its a small PC groupchat with an ancestor making marks on cave walls, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Tommy Motswai, and Eric Yankher.
New and familiar ideas, themes, and thoughts are covered in this series. Spaceships flying (where?), clocks ticking, dolphins jumping, fantasy casinos, florists, unicorns, fruit, endless roads, flashing signs, acupuncture, cabaret kisses, reclining nudes, high heels, drumsticks, apocalyptic rats and bats, SpongeBob stoners, greek meanders, 19080’s hip hop, rainbows (always rainbows), primitive eroticism, all night dance floors, eyes eyes eyes, mosquitoes, Cheetos, personal injury lawyers, meditation, big boobs, magic wands, starry nights, outer space, childhood landscapes, Sex Luv, candy coloured raindrops, waterfalls (also always waterfalls), self help cabaret XXX dreams, ripped freaks, private dancers, slot machines, roulette tables, cats and dogs, handcuffs, dominatrixes, pictures of food, Xanax, KFC Zingers, plastic chairs, poker chips, foreign policy, hot yoga, multi insect killer, happy songs, Philippe Sands, Ezra Klein, Michael Barbaro, Picasso’s blue period, never-ending buildings, psychedelic petroglyphs, lightning flashes, cartoon trees, whipped cream, baby oil, Pasadena meditation, Mongolian BBQ, funky vases, pink rain, 7- Eleven, Double Gulp, streetlights, people, family size Oreos, waves, shark fins, calculators, massage parlours, Kermit, Romeo and Juliet, black and white flowers, Homer Simpson, hard luck and circumstances, dollar bills, and and and…
I’m a particularly proud parent of these drawings. I touched and loved every piece of paper. I covered them in thoughts and colour, I scribbled under, on and above them, scratched and cursed at them, laughed with them, and shouted next to them.
To be an artist is to make magic, to make something out of nothing, and to make nothing into something. Child’s play.
Have paper, pastel, pencil, will travel.
Best,
CP
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