(Jim Campbell; photo: Charles Villyard, courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
Jim Campbell is the great master of giving form to shadow from light. For decades his pioneering LED work has revealed ‘vanishing shadows’. As if they were paintings in Plato’s cave, they are illusions of reality that let us see what is happening via the evidence of their shadows; shadows that are life in motion, a continuous stream of moving silhouettes. And herein lies the magic of his artistry, because in the low-resolution matrix of LEDs that he uses, we participate in a perceptual enquiry where light itself paradoxically reveals those hidden existences in the absence of light.
Jim Campbell’s work creates an embodied perception, where light whispers its fleeting reflections of life, and we listen with our eyes.
Exhibitions
- 2014 Jim Campbell: Rhythms of Perception
Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY - 2014 Jim Campbell: New Work
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York, NY - 2013 Jim Campbell: At The Threshold
Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA - 2011 Jim Campbell: Exploded View
Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY - 2011 Jim Campbell: Static Time, 20 Years of Electronic Art,
Espacio Fundación Telefonica, Buenos Aires, Argentina - 2011 Scattered Light
Upper Landing Park, St. Paul, MN, in conjunction with the Minnesota Museum of American Art and Northern Spark Festival - 2011 Jim Campbell: Recent Work
Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA - 2011 Jim Campbell – Material Light
National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, Denmark - 2011 Jim Campbell: 4 Works
Hosfelt Gallery, New York - 2010 Jim Campbell: In the Repose of Memory
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum & Roanoke College Galleries, VA (dual exhibition) - 2010 Jim Campbell
Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
Professional Awards
- 13th Annual Bay Area Treasure Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012)
- Arts & Letters Award, American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York (2012)
- Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2004)
- Langlois Foundation Grant, Montreal, Quebec (2003)
