Cameron Platter (1978, ZA) is a South African contemporary artist known for his eclectic and thought-provoking works. His work in drawing, painting, sculpture, tapestry, ceramics, video, and the internet, appropriates and filters - in a highly personal and idiosyncratic way - the enormous amount of information available today. Blurring the distinction between high and low, his postmodern and multi-disciplinary approach to art making, typically draws from sources as disparate as art history, ecology, psychedelics, fast food, advertising, therapy, college, and consumerism.
Cameron Platter is known for his colorful pencil crayon works, which he has been making for over 20 years. He considers these detailed drawings his “paintings”. They take a long time to make, but they take even longer to design. Platter tinkers and mulls over his designs for months digitally before committing them to pencil crayon. They are layered images with multiple points in and out for the viewer. Multiple tangents. Platter considers that an important aspect of a successful work. Below, behind, or beyond the surface (he likes his surfaces loud, and brash, and in-your-face) there should be a spiders web of mind-maps that a viewer can follow.
His charcoals come from a slightly different place. Platter considers his charcoal series subconscious automatic notes: "like keeping a diary next to your bed to record your dreams." Platter often uses the charcoal works to workshop ideas, see how thoughts and images play off each other. He likes the fact that one can arrange them in different orders and sequences to get different stories and meanings. The medium is simple and direct, and Platter loves the idea that we (as humans) have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years, right down to cave drawings.