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Rebecca Campbell
PoltergeistL.A. Louver Gallery
45 N. Venice Boulevard, Venice
(310) 822-4955 www.lalouver.com
Poltergeist
Rebecca Campbell
Rainbow in the Dark (purple), oil on canvas, 48" x 53", 2008.
Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
Rainbow in the Dark (purple), oil on canvas, 48" x 53", 2008.
Courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
Rebecca Campbell tricked out the threshold to her exhibition to resemble the entryway of a 1970s suburban manse. The vaulted doorway was surrounded by the suggestion of a painted brick façade -- each brick a small abstract painting -- and hung with a pair of wooden doors borrowed from the artist's childhood home in Utah. Poltergeist was charmingly painted in Old English type with a delicate floral surround on a small sign above the doorway, making explicit reference to the 1982 film of the same name and hinting at otherworldly things to come.
This hint was realized instantly as one passed through the portal and encountered the looming carcass of a large black tree clothed in plush black velvet. Dozens of glass birds filled with antiseptic blue Windex perched in the barren branches, providing gasps of bright color. On the walls surrounding the tree hung three medium-sized paintings of power lines and electrical transformers with birds perched on the wires, seen in silhouette against the neon hues of twilight on a smoggy day. The multi-leveled installation conveyed a disorienting set of signals about where the natural world ends and the supernatural one begins.
This motif continued in other works. In one painting, a man sits mesmerized by the cyan glow of an unseen television screen while a teenage girl peers at him from another room. A room-sized installation of a dining room with chairs akimbo appears as if the furniture is about to slip into the fourth dimension. A video taken from the point of view of someone making a frantic dash through a cornfield plays in a window over the table. On the opposite wall, the clock of an avocado green oven runs maniacally backward. The oven is filled with literary masterworks, from Rousseau to Kundera, that may have been unwelcome intellectual intruders in the artist's Mormon home.
And just when all this garish, fearful imagery verged on horror-movie kitsch, Campbell dialed it back with elegant, abstract wall reliefs made from piano keys, reminding the viewer of the whispered hush of ominous silence.
This hint was realized instantly as one passed through the portal and encountered the looming carcass of a large black tree clothed in plush black velvet. Dozens of glass birds filled with antiseptic blue Windex perched in the barren branches, providing gasps of bright color. On the walls surrounding the tree hung three medium-sized paintings of power lines and electrical transformers with birds perched on the wires, seen in silhouette against the neon hues of twilight on a smoggy day. The multi-leveled installation conveyed a disorienting set of signals about where the natural world ends and the supernatural one begins.
This motif continued in other works. In one painting, a man sits mesmerized by the cyan glow of an unseen television screen while a teenage girl peers at him from another room. A room-sized installation of a dining room with chairs akimbo appears as if the furniture is about to slip into the fourth dimension. A video taken from the point of view of someone making a frantic dash through a cornfield plays in a window over the table. On the opposite wall, the clock of an avocado green oven runs maniacally backward. The oven is filled with literary masterworks, from Rousseau to Kundera, that may have been unwelcome intellectual intruders in the artist's Mormon home.
And just when all this garish, fearful imagery verged on horror-movie kitsch, Campbell dialed it back with elegant, abstract wall reliefs made from piano keys, reminding the viewer of the whispered hush of ominous silence.