NEW YORK, NY.- Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery presents 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, three 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.
For his final piece titled Home Movies, 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. The end result renders these images nearly illegible, simultaneously revealing and obscuring the private moments of anonymous others.
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.
