You know who’s super cool? The artist Camille Rose Garcia. And if you’re cool, then you undoubtedly have the Necessaries Toy Foundation doll quartet produced back in way back in 2006. Besides those awesome dolls, she is really known for her beautiful, dreamy, and eerily creepy painting. Opening September 6th at the Johnathan LeVine Gallery is Ambien Somnambulants, Camille’s second solo show at the gallery. She’ll be showing off her new paintings, drawings and a site-specific installation. “In Ambien Somnambulants, tragic sleepwalkers wander along beautifully bleak post-apocalyptic dreamscapes, inspiring dissent from a dire dystopia.” And in the show she’ll reference “concepts from Snow White, The Matrix, Soylent Green, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Garcia combines Disney references with paranoid social theories and fatal prophesies about the dangers of detachment in troubled times.” The show will be up until October 4th.
AND Camille says… “My toy company, PITCO, is secretly making crazy things! I know it seems like nothing is going on, but believe me, stuff is happening, elves are working, magic is being made.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“Camille Rose Garcia was born in 1970 in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in the generic suburbs of Orange County, visiting Disneyland and going to punk shows with the other disenchanted youth of that era. Her paintings of creepy cartoon children living in wasteland fairy tales are critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias, blending nostalgic pop references with a satirical slant on modern society. Creative influences include Phillip K. Dick, William Burroughs, Henry Darger, and Walt Disney.
In 2007, her work was the subject of a mid-career survey at the San Jose Museum of Art. The retrospective, entitled Tragic Kingdom: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia, was the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. She has pieces in the permanent collection there, as well as in the Los Angeles Museum of Art. The artist currently lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.”
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