Phantasma meets macabre! Camille Garcia art exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery will make you feel the things you’ve never felt before, it will make you question your own reality, and it will leave you with the thought of checking under your bed when you go to sleep that night. The internationally known Los Angeles artist and pop surrealist will present her latest series of spooky and trippy artworks, the gothic-psychedelic nature paintings. The exhibition entitled Phantasmacabre is Camille Rose Garcia’s first solo show in the City of Angels since 2011, and her first display at the Corey Helford Gallery. It is also the first debut of the most significant paintings of her career.
Phantasmacabre series was influenced by the surrealist and symbolic films of the legendary Alejandro Jodorowsky, by Jungian archetypes, and fairy tales. It offers a rich and multi-layered symbolic world that the artist created in the exploration of dreams and memories that haunt us all. As we grow and develop, our fancy becomes more suppressed, clearing the way for a more rational thought. However, it is our subconscious minds that open the doors to the things we try not to think about, our dreams construct fantastic worlds of fairy tales and nightmares. Our psyche unravels when we let go of the inhibitions imposed on us, and lets us become who we really are – the creatures of fancy, both good and bad. Camille Rose Garcia art offers a unique glimpse into this fantastic world with her candy-colored paintings, with her repeating patterns, and her psychedelic symmetry. These elements comprise the organic structure of her artworks with Mother Nature as the main subject who dominates every aspect of her art and our lives.
The gardens filled with intertwining branches and plants, the figurative particles from many a children’s book and from fairy tales, the intimate narrative, and the feminine archetypes and villains occupy the hauntingly beautiful and simultaneously macabre canvases of the Camille Garcia art, creating a subtle balance between creation and destruction.
"I'm trying to capture an emotional and psychological landscape where dreams and memory combine to form a personal symbolic language, both unique and universal. I'm interested in the feeling of something beautiful and frightening existing at the same time. Something painful and pleasurable all at once." – Camille Garcia
Witches and ghosts, skulls and snakes are perfect frames of the acid-colored dreamlike scenes of wounded goddesses, with fertile gardens growing from their open wounds. Insect and imagery from another world inhabit the psychedelic scenes of tango between life and death.
"Most of my work had been about the painful intersection of nature and culture, the rampant destructive nature of the modern world. At times, I feel a certain helplessness about the state of the world, and I retreat into beauty, into color, into music. This is the language of the universe, in all of its repeating patterns. This series of paintings is the most personal, but also universal. It is no longer about culture, but of trying to tap into a deeper symbolic language beyond words." – Camile Garcia
The artist influenced by one of the greatest American writers of all time, William S. Burroughs will present her Phantasmacabre at Corey Helford Gallery from July 16th to August 20th, 2016. The opening reception is scheduled for Saturday, July 16th, from 7 PM to 11 PM. Corey Helford Gallery was founded in 2006 by Jan Corey Helford, and is located at 571 S. Anderson St. in Los Angeles, California. Camile Rose Garcia also tapped into the book world, having published several titles, including Alice in Wonderland Book, Snow White Book, and Mirror, Black Mirror. From the print machine to your home, you can get them at the artist's official web page. Enter the wonderland and check out the Phantasmacabre exhibition!
All images courtesy of the gallery.
Featured image: Camille Rose Garcia - Sooo Good
Images in the slider: Camille Rose Garcia - House of Psyche
Los Angeles, United States of America