"While the imagery is often distorted or exaggerated in Karim Hamid's work, he also seems to expect his paintings to express themselves within their own polemical and painterly distortion of that distortion. It is much about the thing/person being observed, as well as the method of being observed."
(Maria Porges, ArtForum Magazine 1996)
Hamid’s work regularly pulls from the combined traditions of pin-up modeling, vintage soft pornography and western art history to turn the concept of objectification on its head - his paintings focus on what the male gaze means, rather than being about an illict depiction of the female form. Hamid uses the fluidity of his medium to further that point; his subjects are distorted and exaggerated, pushing the viewer to contemplate not only what they are seeing, but the art of how they see it as well.
The End of Play and Infancy is an extension of these themes, and of Hamid’s desire to discard the superficial and cultivate meaningful, genuine connection via life and art. Inspired by the intimacy, romanticism, and the real life human elements captured in films and pornography of the 70’s, this series may invoke an immediate risque sensibility, but really is the antithesis of that. It is an intriguing, visually poetic interpretation of an artistic time in pornography that has since evolved into over-manufactured content void of authenticity and spirituality.
