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Press Release Sponsorship Location
May 11, 2007 – June 24, 2007 At 125 Maiden Lane
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"The world on the street behaves in predictable ways: the grid of city blocks, the buildings, the pathways of activity. Suppose a storefront confounds its sense of space and multiplies like an illusion....The repetition of the storefront sabotages its inherent function, since it contains only images of itself. No access will be gained, only infinite potential." Beth Campbell Potential Store Fronts, Beth Campbell's new project for the Public Art Fund program In the Public Realm, transforms a casual peek into a store window into an unexpected visual revelation. Situated in a corporate building on Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan, Campbell's installation resembles the type of variety store found in neighborhoods all over the city, where a wide assortment of products and services are sold in a single store - from tailoring to psychic readings to lottery tickets. But, in an extraordinary turn, Campbell's storefront repeats itself over and over, receding back into space. While it resembles the experience of standing before an infinity mirror, this startling effect is made all the more uncanny by the fact that it is actual rather than illusory - the storefront truly is replicated several times, with absolute fidelity to detail. In her meticulous repetition of an otherwise happenstance or banal scenario, Campbell draws attention to the everyday clutter of life that one typically overlooks. The scene also suggests a perceptual ripple in one's physical or psychological space, a recurring theme in Campbell's widely diverse body of work, which also includes drawing, watercolor, photography and video. In her well-known series of text drawings, "My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances," Campbell has portrayed instances in which a person stands at the precipice of a life decision - however trivial or momentous - that leads to a cacophonous flowchart of possible outcomes. In Potential Store Fronts, Campbell continues her investigation into the relationships between self-awareness, actuality, illusion, choice, repetition, and change. Beth Campbell's work has been featured in solo exhibitions including "How Did We End Up Here?" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York (2005); "Make Belief" at Sala Diaz, San Antonio (2005); "I was thinking (a living room)" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (2004); "Every other day" at Art Academy of Cincinnati (2004); "Same As Me" at Sandroni Rey Gallery, Los Angeles (2003) and Roebling Hall, Brooklyn (2002); "House (A Standardized Affectation for Telepresence)" at Roebling Hall (2000); and "White Room" at White Columns, New York (2000). She was born in Illinois in 1971, and now lives and works in Brooklyn. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1997); Ohio University (MFA, 1997); Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri (BFA, 1993). Potential Store Fronts is a project of the Public Art Fund program In the Public Realm, which is supported by the Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation and, in part, by public funds from National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts, A State Agency; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
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This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with space donated by Time Equities.