New York, NY- Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery announces its second gallery exhibition of new
works by Jim Campbell.
Widely considered one of the pioneering artists of the twenty-first century, Jim
Campbell manipulates the base materials of electronics and computers into a visual
haiku of the information age. The essence of Campbell’s art is not in soldered
connections, but rather a sublime reduction of vision into rhythm. What is barely
deciphered by the eye is strangely comprehensible to the mind, as if reconstructing
familiar memories from the future. Campbell’s innovative techniques transform the
pervasive media verse surrounding us – and our relation to it.
Campbell’s decade long exploration into LED
technology has resulted in his newest
configuration, titled Exploded View. The grid
defining the image will be made up of
approximately 1152 LEDs. Campbell takes a
traditional two-dimensional surface and pulls
it apart into a three dimensional grid.
Exploded View physically takes an image
display apart, forcing the viewer to rely on
perception and memory as a means to understand
its logic. His continuing investigation of
extremely low-resolution imagery functions as
an exploration of the furthest margins of
visual perception, revealing how much, or how
little information is required for
comprehension.
In addition, four new photo based, LED works,
will be on display, including Tourists #2
(Statue of Liberty), in which the artist has
affixed a still image of the historic landmark
on a sheet of Plexiglas. Playing behind is a
pointillist, 20-minute animation on a
programmed LED display, depicting pedestrians
walking past the site. In contrast to the
durability of the statue, the people are mere
shadows, darkening the scene for moments before
passing from view. The most minimal of cues
here make it possible to recognize these ghosts
as figures in motion. They are at once there
and not there, inhabiting the border zone
between presence and absence.
Columns of suspended LED’s create a grid by
which Campbell has taken passages from found
home movies - and subjected them to pixilation
so thin that it almost completely starves them
of definition. Home Movies the title of this new
work, renders these images nearly illegible,
simultaneously revealing and obscuring the
private moments of anonymous others.
Lastly, Jim Campbell further explores the
intersection of photography and video in
Montgomery Street Pause. Here, the viewer
watches a LED display of a cross section in
San Francisco which the artist intermittently
pauses causing the viewer to consider still
frames which are at once abstract, finding
resolution at the point of continuation.
The exhibition coincides with the release of Jim Campbell Material Light, a new
monograph published by Hatje Cantz.
Jim Campbell was born in 1956 in Chicago, IL. He earned a degree at M.I.T. in
Electrical Engineering and Mathematics in 1978, and now lives and works in San
Francisco; CA. Campbell’s work is in the collections of some of the country’s most
important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern
Art, The Smithsonian, The Whitney Museum of American Art and The San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. Upcoming museum exhibitions include The Vancouver Art Gallery
2010, The National Museum of Photography, Denmark, 2011, and Museum of Contemporary
Art Kiasma, Finland, 2011. Additionally, the Madison Square Park Conservancy, New
York, has commissioned a site-specific light sculpture, to be exhibited October
2011.
For more information please contact Amanda Wilkes at [email protected]