Camille Rose Garcia Retrospective At Grand Central Ntf News!

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CSUF Grand Central Art Center is proud to present the exhibition

The Saddest Place on Earth the art of Camille Rose Garcia

October 1 - December 18, 2005

A 138-page,  hardcover book featuring  more than 100 color images has been produced for this exhibition.  

On October 1, Camille Rose Garcia will sign books from 6-7 pm, and an exhibition reception will be take place from 6-10 pm.

According to Merry Karnowsky Gallery:

Camille Rose Garcia was born in Los Angeles, California and 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.

Creative influences include Phillip K. Dick, William Burroughs, Henry Darger, Walt Disney, as well as politically aware bands like The Clash and Dead Kennedys.  Her work has appeared in Flaunt Magazine, Rolling Stone, Juxtapoz, and Paper Magazine, among others. Her art has been exhibited internationally in Spain, Germany and Italy, as well as in Los Angeles and New York.  She currently lives in Los Angeles.  

As Mike McGee wrote in the essay for the book, The Saddest Place on Earth the art of Camille Rose Garcia:

Camille Rose Garcia’s art might lead one to think it is from a distant time and place. The surfaces of her paintings are fatigued and suggest layers that have been worn and repeatedly painted over; her patterns and motifs allude to an array of eras from the Middle Ages to the 1950s—with heavy leanings      toward the 50s; and her figures are remote cousins of classic fairytale and early-twentieth-century cartoon and animation characters. Yet Garcia is very much an artist of and about our time. The late playwright Arthur Miller told several interviewers during his lifetime that what motivated him to write was a burning desire to critique the society in which he lived. Garcia has a similar passion to create inventive characters and imaginary worlds that function on a gamut of levels but most pointedly to assess and comment upon the twenty-first century world in which she lives. As she told an interviewer, “Things that make me mad motivate me.â€

In a 2003 article for the British magazine Modern Painter, in which he was asked to identify the twenty-four hottest artists in Los Angeles, art-world pundit and Coagula magazine founder Mat Gleason wrote that Garcia is “the most interesting acolyte of the Juxtapoz magazine art movement.†She has received considerable coverage by the press, lauded by mainstream and alternative critics alike. One Los Angeles Times critic wrote, “Garcia’s paintings have a dark, dark charm.†In a cover story for Los Angeles Times Magazine about Chicano art today, another writer observed, “Her experiences and work perfectly reflect the crossroads at which this new generation of [Chicano] artists has arrived.

For additional information please contact:

Andrea Harris-McGee, director

CSUF Grand Central Art Center

125 N. Broadway

Santa Ana, CA 92701

714-567-7234  714-567-7233

[email protected]

www.grandcentralartcenter.com