Jim Campbell’s Poetic Engineering of Choices

The Williamson gallery of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design currently houses an intriguing exhibition with the rather long title “Memory, Reflection and Transformation, Reactive Works by Jim Campbell.”

The hot potato in that little word-stew is certainly “reactive.” If we respond one way to this work, it’s a dud. Choose an equally available alternate and it’s quite wonderful.

Campbell is not an artist of the familiar kind. Based in San Francisco, he’s just a hair over 40. Born in Chicago, he took his undergraduate degree from MIT in electrical engineering and math. Now he exercises his technological skills in the service of what is unmistakably an artistic sensibility.

The look of the work is not entirely unfamiliar. Some pieces recall the beloved-junk art of the assemblagists and are as delicate as a Joseph Cornell. Other works join the genre of large installations while recalling machine-driven kinetic contraptions like the work of, say, Jean Tinguely. There is a further relationship to video art since Campbell has a propensity for television. Finally there is an unexpected link to performance art that’s a surprise because the performer is--guess who?--us. Campbell transforms gallery visitors from viewers to participants.

On entry, one is confronted by “Digital Watch,” a large-tube black-and-white TV monitor. The screen is almost filled by the face of a timepiece with the second-hand clicking relentlessly. For a short interval that’s all you see. Then your own image appears on the screen. It’s obvious you’re on candid camera but then you notice that whatever you’re doing is out of sync with the image on the screen. That’s caused by a delay device that shows us our actions from a few seconds earlier but it can have the magical effect of reminding us of how our minds work. Whatever we’re up to at any given moment is informed by past memories that shade present feelings. Campbell brings the classic medieval theme of the memento mori into the dusk of the 20th century. He is a techno-age philosopher and poet.

“Hallucination” also shows us ourselves on TV, but here Campbell is a moralist and mordant wit. This time our image catches fire. We flame without being consumed like the biblical burning bush. Campbell varies the theme by bringing an attractive young woman on screen. She gives either thumbs-up or thumbs-down to determine whether or not we take fire. Male participants of the romantic kind immediately get the point.

This is an emotionally and intellectually rich exhibition. “Untitled (For Heisenberg)” is a black room containing a dais heaped with salt that acts as the screen for a video of a nude couple in amorous embrace. From the far end of the enclosure the angle of view is too oblique to get a good look. Voyeuristic curiosity carries one toward the dais but somehow the projector is rigged to zoom in as the viewer approaches. At close range the projection is enlarged to an ambiguous abstraction. We’re left to decode the message, “The closer you get, the less you see.”

“Solstice (Assisted Meditation)” is another black room. It contains a single candle burning in a rudimentary chandelier. Thin cables rock it slightly. All the while the room is filled with sounds that make one feel like a passenger on an ancient vessel buffeted by hurricane winds. Why all the din when the title suggests meditation? As it turns out, the heat of the candle creates the sound. So without light there is no chaos but also no life. Deep stuff.

Smaller projects are no less intriguing. A mounted piece of typing paper is blank even though it emits the sounds of a typewriter. It’s a touching piece even before one learns the matter being not written is Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I Have Never Read the Bible” displays a battered copy of the holy book wired to the sound of a voice that appears to be reciting the alphabet. A closer listen reveals that the voice is spelling out the biblical text one letter at a time.

Among the possible interpretations of such pieces is the inescapable idea that Campbell recognizes a fundamental danger in the way he makes art. Its technical wizardry can distract us from attending to the important things Campbell has to say.

The exhibition was organized by gallery director Stephen Nowlin. He has by now established a track record of shows that place him among the most thoughtful and inventive curatorial talents in this geography.

* Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena; through July 13, closed Mondays and holidays, (818) 396-2244.