nathan james interview

nathan james interview
top image: hey girl, oil on sized linen, 30 x 24 inches, 2013

canadian artist nathan james currently has his exhibition punchlines on show at KK outlet in london. the show which runs until 26 october, 2013 new works take a grimly comic, darkly humorous look at contemporary life. distorting images of americana, advertising, pin-ups, hollywood and traditional beauty and injects them with his own feelings towards the characters and the scenes they inhabit.

drugs’ll fix it, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, 2012

in punchlines, the original intent of the source material is undercut by darker elements which at first seem superficially funny, but leave the viewer with a bleak, lingering aftertaste. archetypal beauty has turned sour and perfection is replaced by a warped cartoon aesthetic.

james’ work draws influence from both the failed industrial background of his childhood in ontario and the fantastical world of cartoons and characters he grew up immersed in.

paint what you know, oil on linen, 30 x 24 inches, 2012

designboom spoke to james about punchlines to learn more:

DB: what originally attracted you to cartoons characters and working them into your art?
NJ: it originally started with the three mickey mouse glove paintings that are the first things you see in the show. I made those with a first-person perspective in mind. as if those are supposed to be my hands. in those pieces I was playing with the idea of pessimist pop, using some of the conventions and iconography of popular art and culture to examine darker, more unsavory aspects of my personality (in the case of these: laziness, loneliness, and neediness). giving myself cartoon hands was way of making them into a more caricatured version of myself, to kind of take the sting out the themes explored. instead of being pathetic and sad, it made them funny. a way of laughing at my own shortcomings.

who needs friends, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, 2012

DB: how does this collection build on what you explored in your previous work?
NJ: in my previous exhibition, creepshow, I primarily used 50s hollywood b-movie posters for source material. the process was similar in that they were all lowbrow images which I’d altered with melting faces, cartoon eyes and crooked toothy grins but for the most part they were darker and more unsettling. with a few of the pieces in the show I took a more humorous approach and the results really resonated with me. I decided to explore that further with this show while also choosing to widen my scope in terms of the types of images I was appropriating. these included sweet valley high book covers, gil elvgren pinups, tampon and soft drink advertisements among others.

carry on, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, 2013