Nina Johnson is proud to present The Fair Mountain, an exhibition of new paintings by Seth Cameron, opening on January 10th with a public reception (7-9pm), and remaining on view through February 8th.

The Fair Mountain is a series of 11 paintings in gouache on paper depicting a fable of the natural world and our relationship to it. It is at once a story of our ability to destroy the world and to create it anew, told through the inherent contingencies of color, shape and language.

Drawing inspiration from Bauhaus pedagogy and the traditions of Chinese landscape painting, Cameron employs starkly minimal means to suggest a rich imaginary world. Through his exacting compositions and the tale they tell of a civilization continuously contending with its own demise, The Fair Mountain toys with the edges between form and representation, representation and meaning, meaning and make believe. The Fair Mountain refuses to “come to terms” with the world through naming and moral finitude, instead suggesting a form of foundational storytelling that privileges aesthetic play.

Seth Cameron (b. 1982, South Carolina) is a painter and writer. Recent solo exhibitions include Sunless at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York (2019) and Suns at McClain Gallery, Houston (2018). In 2001 he founded the artist collective, The Bruce High Quality Foundation and from 2009-17 he directed the free experimental art school, BHQFU. In the summer of 2019 he was an artist-in-residence with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. He lives and works in New York.