Curated by Beatrix Ruf

Taking on the major cultural stakes of vernacular social phenomena, Cameron Jamie locates the convergence of spectacle, performance art, and ethnography in order to air the seriously unheimlich in working-class suburbia. Take, for example, the backyard wrestling of BB, 1998–2000, or the domestic dance insanity of Massage the History, 2007–2009, which Harmony Korine declared “the single greatest dance film ever made.” This summer, the Kunsthalle Zürich surveys Jamie’s oeuvre, with selections from the early 1980s to the present. Expect a spectrum of materials to be on view, from drawings and
ceramics to the documentary movies for which this expat American artist is most celebrated—a rare treat given that, despite having apotheosized (and prefigured by nearly a decade) the ways in which subcultures would self-present on YouTube, Jamie’s nondigital footage is basically unviewable at home.

— Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer