American sculptor. He studied Experimental Psychology at Ohio State University, Columbus (1955–60) and film at City College Film Institute, New York (1961–2). Campus was part of the first generation of artists who sought to investigate the formal possibilities of video and film technology. He brought to this an interest in behavioural psychology and the role of the viewer then current among contemporaries such as Bruce Nauman. Initially he was drawn to the blurred quality of low grade images, such as those from CCTV cameras: Optical Sockets> (1972–3; see 1979 exh. cat., p. 18) is typical of his early installations in its use of four video cameras and four monitors set up in a square in order to create four images of the viewer. This interest in doubling (in the Doppelgänger), the myth of Narcissus, and the dissolution of material reality, continued as his formal concerns led him to settle on the use of static imagery. Three Transitions (1973; see 1979 exh. cat., pp. 55–60) is a famous example from this period in which he used camera trickery to create the illusion of him setting light to his own face. Towards the end of the 1970s he began to explore slide projection and black-and-white photography. In the 1980s he merged the two to examine how projected light alters our perception of images: Murmur (Gemurel) (1987; see 1990 exh. cat., p. 16), a monumental depiction of stones, is typical of his interest in natural imagery at the time. Throughout the 1990s he continued to move away from depiction of the human figure and towards natural imagery, while exploring the effects of combining and manipulating photographs. Flutter (1993; see Princethal, 1994, p. 125) is characteristic of this work: a colour image depicts a butterfly in some grass, but the low resolution of the image produces a flatness that makes detail and space confusing.
Morgan Falconer
From Grove Art Online
© 2009 Oxford University Press