“My work is an investigation of sexuality as identity, and the exchange between them as they radiate and coalesce into facets of gay culture.” – Introducing James Kane.
This has consisted of painting scenarios in which normative societal spaces and mainstream experiences are given a queer slant as a way to reclaim them. It sounds simple and idealistic, but only ten years ago, rites of passage like skinny dipping and summer crushes were insurmountable hurdles for my teenaged self, situations immersed in desire and anxiety. By creating scenes derivative of these types of experiences, I am able to alter the narrative, completing a fantasy while simultaneously making work indicative of my current relationship to myself and those around me. I explore the dichotomy between the bravery and impotence of youth, giving me the opportunity to examine the phenomena of belated adolescence, while creating a more visible, achievable reality for myself.
A predominant goal of my work is to investigate the space between illusion and authenticity using homoerotic imagery, depicting the projected personas gay men erect versus the reality of the everyday lives we lead. This is not an attempt to disparage gay culture by exploiting long-standing assumptions, but a means of celebration, agency, and ownership by subverting presupposed imagery and ideas. As a gay man coming of age between the epoch of the AIDS crisis and marriage equality, I choose to create a portfolio in which a legacy of despair can coexist with an optimistic future, and stereotypes can be anything from assumed cliché to uncomfortable truth. Recently, I have worked on depicting a mixture of purely fabricated scenes and authentic relationship rituals. I work from photographs and sketches of invented liaisons, and often begin in acrylics before working over the initial under-painting with oils. While I work primarily with figures, I struggle between attempted realism of the male form and the abstraction created in the atmosphere around them. By focusing on the physicality formed with paint, I hope to elucidate aspects of the tension and joy in the relationships they depict.
In today’s volatile and often antagonistic social and political climate, continuing a visual narrative of queer experience is as important as ever, and I intend to present as honest and provocative a depiction of that experience as possible.” – James Kane
Find more: @jameskaneart / www.jameskaneart.com