Camille Rose Garcia – Fairytale From The Black Lagoon
Camille Rose Garcia - White Swan With Potion
Camille Rose Garcia is most popularly known for contributing the illustrations to the New York Times bestseller Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This Los Angeles-based, lowbrow artist, however, has a far wider-reaching career than reinterpreting the works of Lewis Carroll. Over a dozen gallery exhibits and three books across the last decade have made Garcia’s style and tone recognizable to even the more casual art enthusiasts, even if unaware of the artist’s full body of work.
Camille Rose Garcia - Mirror, Black Mirror
“Sneewittenhen und die Schwarze Lagune” or “Snow White And The Black Lagoon” was displayed in the Michael Kohn gallery from March 12 to April 9, 2011. Garcia has included among the collective works in the exhibition glitter-and-gold-leaf paintings in acrylic, ink and pencil drawings on tattered paper, and mixed media portraiture in vintage frames representing mirrors. The gallery press release says of Garcia’s exhibit:
Referencing the classic German Fairy tale, as well as the animated film by Walt Disney, Garcia weaves a monstrous modern and dysfunctional narrative using cartoony, Jungian archetypes, a psychedelic saturated color palette, and an obtuse combination of action-painter brush strokes and carefully controlled, calligraphic line work. Gold leaf and black glitter hang out together on the paintings in an uncomfortable but tolerated relationship. Leaking black castles, oily witches, and a gang of tired and dizzy dwarf miners accompany the Snow White and her fragile entourage of forest and lagoon animals as they traverse through caves, lagoons, and compromised natural landscapes, searching for an elusive happy ending.
Camille Rose Garcia - Hunters and Warriors
Camille Rose Garcia - Dreamtime Battle
Camille Rose Garcia - Children Wake Up
Garcia is generally classified as producing gothic fairytales, with unsettling cartoons and a downright creepy tone throughout her oeuvre. Definitely fitting the mark are the vintage framed works within “Black Lagoon.” The mixed media works are set into the frame forming the image of a reflection in a looking glass of sorts, the subject of each attempting to frame an allegory between the familiar märchen and our current relationship with nature and society.
Camille Rose Garcia - Leaky Empires
Camille Rose Garcia - Slow Ghost
Is the exhibit deserving of a royal wedding, or is it more suited to dine on poisoned apples? Cast your votes.
Exhibitions at the Michael Kohn gallery.
Selected works from Sneewittenhen und die Schwarze Lagune.
Camille Rose Garcia’s personal .