Russel Cameron’s Unsettling Sculptures of Flesh and Bone

Matching the look of flesh has always been and is still considered one of the most demanding tasks for any artist. It is notoriously difficult for many reasons, making it a subject of intrigue throughout history. Brooklyn based sculptor Russel Cameron is a self taught artist who has made recreating flesh the primary focus of his work. His ongoing series “Flesh and Bone” explores the subtleties between skin tones, wrinkled and smooth parts, soft and rough textures, using materials like clay, paint, wood, and metal. While he sees skin and its nuances as a thing of beauty, he presents it in unsettling ways. His sculptures contort and disfigure human limbs, toes and fingers that could have been taken from the bodies in Zdzislaw Beksinski and H.R Giger’s works, two of Cameron’s favorite visual artists. He understands how the appearance of skin can reveal information about age, gender, and the emotional state of another being. We do not know who or where these displaced appendages came from, but if we look into the darkest depths of our imagination, we can almost see the creature they belonged to.