Jamie Hamilton

Absolute contingency describes the extravagant idea that nothing is necessary or subject to reason, rather everything must be able to be otherwise. Exhilarating or nihilistic? Exhilarating and nihilistic? It is language that revels in baroque extremes, fragmentation and uncertainty, expressing an ambivalent fascination with contemporary structures.

Jamie Hamilton’s analogs, photographs of recent sculptures situated among drapery and dichroic glass mirrors use multiple 4 x 5 film exposures and are optically printed on silver gelatin paper.  Although solely created through analog technologies these works uncannily allude to digital space. Phantasmagorical landscapes of roaming, gazing and manipulating machines suggest a world without empathy and responsibility. Notions of cybernetic progress are challenged by this seductive and haunting pictorial narrative.

Active Measures, is a body of recent work.

Drawing on raw surplus materials such as aluminum from the aerospace industry and dichroic glass from optical laboratories, the artist has machined sensuous systemic objects in which reflections and recursions proliferate, dazzling the viewer. Hamilton’s work is influenced by the legacy of Constructivism and Duchamp’s erotic bachelor machine but also scavenges ancient forms (reliquary, dorje, weapon, serpent, celestial sphere...) that have seemingly mutated with contemporary tropes in genetics, neuroscience, finance and informatics. Their meticulous engineered design articulates extreme contrasts of scale and polarities of strength and delicacy befitting a post-digital conception of space-time. Near and far, physical and virtual, horror/humor and the sublime are scrambled or collapsed, resonating as such with current ideas about the anthropocene, post-humanism, dark ecology and speculative realism in philosophy. The palpable density of valuable materials and extravagance of skilled labor exhibited in these subtle pseudo machines engender a risky question about how our culture establishes value. What endures? Hamilton’s work goes daringly against the grain of the increasingly immaterial labor and aggressive speed of our world while beautifully embodying its dilemmas.

Over the past three years Hamilton has worked on a monumental land art performance project involving high wire walking, design, building, and physical training.  The sculptures he has worked on concurrently relate directly to this project.   An exploration of possibility and structure has always been a staple in his work, but it becomes much more serious when building aerial structures upon which his life depends. Hamilton takes a stance of total responsibility when he becomes engineer designer, fabricator and performer.  He must face the fact that he is fallible and that misconceptions on his part can be costly.  The work can be summed up as an experiment in possibility, the construction of a bridge connecting idea and intention to action and creation.   Kurt Gödel, the influential mathematician and logician, described the impossibility of grasping the absolute, of perfectly bridging the apparent chasm between mind and matter.  In his famous Incompleteness Theorems, he stated that we can either generate a theory which is consistent but incomplete, or a theory which is complete but contains contradictions.  When life confronts us with a decision, given Gödel’s insight into the limits of our ability to “know,” how do we proceed?  We experience the double bind of knowing that any decision which is without loss does not account for possibility and one which accounts for possibility intrinsically leads to confusion.  Incompleteness Theorem explores forms and ideas which reflect Gödel’s insight.  Using mirrors, steel, and magnets to explore the interaction of invisible force with tangible material, Hamilton investigates paradox and the confusion which arises from a mind that believes itself separate from experiential phenomena.

2012, steel, spandex, nylon, 16'h x 36'w x 24'd

Thanatos is a complex large scale site specific installation which was the centerpiece of a 2012 exhibition held at The Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Energy is stored within the installation in the form of highly tensioned nylon webbing. The nylon straps hold poles erect, suspend forms of steel and fabric, and allow visual rhythms to be held in a state of suspended animation.  Hamilton uses this structure of Thanatos and its tactile stored energy as a means to examine the intertwining of creative and destructive potentials.

2011-12, steel, polycarbonate, 15'h x 14'w x 8'd

Eros is a sculptural mechanical exploration of the relationship between lovers.  Through its creation and varied installations, Hamilton explores the forces of desire, fear, and their coincidence.    

Eros is built of modular parts allowing indefinite forms. When installed, it assumes a static position which represents a configuration, not the fixed and final form of classical sculpture. Eros’s next incarnation will not be a duplicate of the last.  A very simple set of wrenches is all that is necessary to accomplish an installation of the sculpture, and a mapping of the parts in a particular installation for future reproduction is never done.   Every iteration is a response of the artist using Eros’s parts to build a relationship with one and other and to the new environment.   

An Exhibition held at, The Center For Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe New Mexico. 2012

2007 Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe NM