Exhibition Description
Susan Goethel Campbell
ROTATIONS
Oct 26 through Nov 30, 2013
Re:View Contemporary Gallery is pleased to present Rotations, an exhibition extending into two separate gallery spaces by multidisciplinary artist Susan Goethel Campbell. The work considers the intersection of nature, culture and the engineered environment from three shifting perspectives.
In the first gallery, Campbell considers the ground plane. Nature is ordered and engineered and becomes a unit for building. A large floor installation of inverted sod considers the earth’s surface as if it were a patterned carpet. Two large black platforms provide a backdrop to shift our perspective from looking closely at the intricate patterns of roots to considering a more distant view of the earth’s surface. On one platform the repeating units of dried sod spill onto the floor in an ordered corridor. A second platform supports an isolated cluster of freshly inverted sod. The bright green fringe of the grass is a stark contrast to other, older units, where the grass has turned the color of wheat.
In the second gallery, Campbell shifts our perspective from the ground to the air. Her series Outside/In explores how architecture mediates our experience of nature and seasonal debris. She creates wooden armatures stretched with screen that reference doors and windows. These structures become portals for viewing seasonal ephemera from trees and plants that has stuck to the screen. In one series titled Points of Perception Campbell has punched holes in the screen documenting moments in time where the outside and inside temperature were exactly the same.
The second gallery rotates our perception back to the ground plane. Her series of Aerial prints looks at patterns of urbanization from a distant perspective. Tiny punched holes in the paper illuminate the geometric shapes and patterns found in the built environment. Similar shapes are seen in the floor installation in the main gallery.
Susan Goethel Campbell earned an MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including The Drawing Center and The International Print Center in New York. In 2009 she was one of 18 artists selected for the inaugural Kresge Artist Fellowship. Campbell has been awarded printmaking residencies at the Flemish Center for Graphic Arts in Kasterlee, Belgium and the Beisinghoff printmaking residency near Kassel Germany. She taught studio art for 15 years at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and has been a visiting artist in many institutions in the United States and abroad. Her work is in major public and private collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, New York Public Library, Detroit Institute of Arts, Toledo Museum of Art and the University of Michigan Special Collections Library..