In 1991 Kamen embarks on perhaps his first mature series, ‘Caged Waits’ (1991-93), which remain some of the most important works in his oeuvre. The ‘Caged Waits’ works, large abstract works based loosely on the format of the human skull and spine, are painted solely using sky blue, cream, black, coffee and graphite. At this time, Kamen was beginning to incorporate the written word and script into his paintings and in that there are strong parallels to the work of Cy Twombly, whose work Kamen encountered later with great delight and a sense of kinship. It is during this time that Kamen’s existential interest in language, especially short, two or three letter words, manifests in his work. Kamen seems to have had a sort of anti-Dada approach to language; in that instead of professing nonsense or meaninglessness, Kamen’s language instead holds a deep, delicate meaning. He unearths

the meaning of the short, connecting words such as ‘and’ ‘is’ or ‘it’, elevating them to profound statements of connectivity or existential questioning. An interest in Zen, and the notions of ‘nothing’, ‘whole’ or ‘infinity’ also informed his linguistic and gestural explorations of the time.

Whilst the form of the human spine in some of these works provided a loose figurative framework, the artist arrived at the abstract marks and gestures by observing the inner sensations and rhythms of his own body whilst painting. The parallels to Abstract Expressionism, especially in the work of Jackson Pollock, who had a similar embodied

approach, are not lost here although Kamen was not influenced by Pollock in any direct way.

Kamen extends this idea by asserting that the viewer themselves should have an embodied sense of presence as they viewed the works, writing: ‘Most of these paintings are 8 foot and some are larger and much of this work was intended to be hung in corridors so the viewer is unable to stand back and had to deal with the surface and rhythms as you pass along them. For the marks I looked at the spine and the skull and the markings on stones I found on a beach in Cornwall. Between these limitations I was able to make 3 years of very intense work.'

Works from these series can be found in the collections of Kate Moss, Tatjana Patitz, Johnny Depp, Naomi Campbell, Neneh Cherry, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Helmut Lang among others.