Death In A Place Like This | James Dean Diamond
In context of Art-Athina 2005, CHEAPART presents the installation 'Death in a place like this' by James Dean Diamond.
CHEAPART has been participating in Art Athina since 2001, presenting projects from artists from Greece and abroad. Each body of work is presented as an individual entity that marks the contemporary and experimental art scene.
James Dean Diamond utilises the medium of photography to explore the realms of fantasy through a self enclosed aesthetic system. Illustrating a confluence between the representational, the abstract and the artificial Death in a place like this is a concept that has evolved through a metaemotional state. As a visceral body of work it seeks to articulate a state of mind with a nonlinear narrative.
Within the confines of this project the notion of death alludes to a hypothesis which considers the physical act of dying as a removed state of being. During such a process the brain induces a collation of images to surface from dreams, memories and nightmares. The audience encounters an environment that comprises unknown places inhabited by ectoplasmic characters and solitary figures, motifs of superstition, shadows, reflections and textural surfaces.
Developed over a period of five years the sixtyseven black and white prints were created using various technical approaches to ensure a stylistic cohesiveness. They each measure 50cm x 75cm and were shot on 35mm film, predominately ‘in camera.’ There is an element of the work that concentrates on depicting the actual material subjects in a sublime and abstracted form. Other pieces are digitally manipulated to convey a ghoulish and haunting presence.
Inspiration is drawn from certain aspects of gothic punk and classical music, where the intention has been to convert sound into a two-dimensional form. Influenced by German Expressionist cinema and in particular by the filmmakers/animators the Brothers Quay who released the wondrous fantasy plane the ‘Institute of Benjamenta’ in 1995.
The omnipresent black palette infers to Diamond’s disdain of the homogenisation of contemporary British culture and is very much removed from the pervading ‘real life’ genre. Here the black sheen, that resembles asphalt, metaphorically expresses his fear and anguish towards his existence which is also compounded by the prevailing sense of not belonging to our present society. Diamond is reminiscing upon his youth, where as a gothic punk he sought to escape the mindset of provincial life and exist in a theatrical and filmic world. It is to this end by delving into a fictional place the work becomes an allegorical selfportrait of the artist.
Exhibition and Text curated by: Samia Ashraf
Art-Athina 2005
CHEAPART
Booth D 00
HELEXPO Exhibition and Conference Center
39 Kifissias Ave., 15123 Marousi, Greece
Private view: Friday, May 20, 2005
Duration: 20 - 24.5.2005
Hours: 21 - 22.5.2005, 12:00 - 21:00
23 - 24.5.2005 15:00 - 21:00
