May 7, 2009—June 6, 2009

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition of sculpture and drawing by Beth Campbell. The artist practice ranges from video and installation investigating spatial repetition, to drawing and sculpture. The exhibition will include three hanging sculpture and two drawings.

Finding meaning in the multiplicity of signs that is found today’s culture, Campbell’s mobiles and drawings abstractly communicate a network of issues that often combine both personal and public information. They suggest connection and interruption; and reveal outcomes that lead to multiple possibilities. Reminiscent of flow-charts, both the elegant hanging sculptures and the drawings become reductive gestures that investigate form, line and volume.

Although non referential, Campbell’s mobiles are not without resonance. Visually they formally lie with structure and segmentation but their implication of extendibility extends beyond their physical constraints. The artist conceives them as matter of fact strategies for “drawings in space” formed around a specific investigation. For example, “The Long Pause” is an investigation of truth, reality and fiction. The bends and twists of Campbell’s wire not only are the endgame of the action of her hand, but also become the physical synapse representing a peculiar incident or investigation of subjectivity. Thus the entire work becomes meditation on the limits of possibilities.

Seen as a whole, the exhibition evokes a symptomatic hierarchy of continuity, often resulting in finality or renewal. In Campbell’s hands, implied social, technological, and architectural systems are destined from stasis in our current viral environment.

Download the press release