ART DESCRIPTION
This small portrait of Joe Frazier, American boxer known as ‘Smokin’ Joe’ who famously gave Muhammed Ali his first professional loss, is from the ‘Plaster’ series of 2011-2015, a progression from Kamen’s earlier work in portraiture. In this series, Kamen uses an adhesive plaster as a miniature canvas, producing these small and exquisite portraits. Kamen loved sport and likely produced this portrait when Frazier died in 2011, as a tribute to him. Boxing, sometimes named the ‘sweet science’, is a mixture of strength, sagacity, power, subtlety and gracefulness – all words that resonate with Kamen’s work.
The plaster motif is very important to Kamen’s work and appears in many forms over time. Initially, the plaster is painted onto the surface using acrylic, becoming a kind of visual signature (rather like the crown in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work). In 2011 Kamen has a ‘joyful realisation’ that the adhesive plaster itself is a mini canvas. He then begins to paint and draw onto the plasters themselves, creating these miniature paintings. A kaleidoscope of human history and existential wanderings, the motifs vary from historical and political figures, to mushroom cloud formations, to the packaging of an Amazon parcel draped liked a Papal robe. Not only the incredible draftsmanship of these miniature paintings, but Kamen’s ability to find the timeless that exists between the historical and the contemporary, and pull it all into the present, makes this series extraordinary.
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