JIM CAMPBELL: Screen Obscura October 13, 2012

13 October - 8 December, Reception: Saturday 13 October, 4-6pm

Using LEDs and custom electronics, Jim Campbell constructs works that flirt with the limits of perception. In this exhibition, Campbell presents two permutations of his Home Movies series, whose source material comes from found footage of old home movies. In addition to the perceptual challenge of low-resolution imagery typical of his work, both pieces in this exhibition involve another element of obfuscation, which paradoxically facilitates their comprehension.

The home movie footage is translated via computer programming into low-resolution digital information that controls the firing and intensity of a grid of LEDs. In Home Movies 1040-1, the LEDs are individually mounted on tiny square computer chips and turned towards the wall, away from the viewer. In Home Movie Grid 2, a single panel of LEDs is covered by a sheet of Plexiglas printed with a grid of black squares. In both works, the imagery created by the flickering LEDs is both obscured and revealed by the nature of their construction. While each light is directly blocked by a black square (or computer chip), the diffuse 'halos' around each square overlap and 'blend' the image into a coherent, perceivable whole.

Home Movies 1040-1 is unique in Campbell's Home Movies series in that it incorporates movie footage from a single family. Spanning the 1940s through the '60s, it unfolds into a multi-generational, middle-class American epic. Home Movie Grid 2 presents a series of landscape scenes shot from the window of a moving vehicle. In both works the film footage captures those moments that were, and still are, considered most meaningful in life - birthday parties, family vacations, holiday celebrations and the like. As our experience of each work alternates between the recognition of moving images and pure perception of changing shapes, we feel the pull of personal memories paradoxically suggested by anonymous records of the past.

Official Website: http://hosfeltgallery.com