Art Museum Opens with Exhibitions that Illuminate Time, Memory, Movement

Jim Campbell?s "Ambiguous Icon #5 (running, falling)," 2000, is one of six custom electronics that will be on display at The College of Wooster Art Museum Aug. 29-Oct. 22. (Courtesy the artist, San Francisco, and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco and New York)

WOOSTER, Ohio - Artists Jim Campbell and Hiraki Sawa will share their technology-based art about time, movement, and memory in two one-person exhibitions at The College of Wooster Art Museum in Ebert Art Center (1220 Beall Ave.) Aug. 29 through Oct. 22.

Campbell, a Chicago-native and a graduate of M.I.T., where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, will present six custom electronics in the Burton D. Morgan Gallery. An artist about whom it has been said "employs technology in the service of profound humanism," Campbell's art is a neutral ground where two types of signal processing converge - the technological and the human. As the LED (Light Emitting Diode) panels run through their programmed loops, they suggest ideas about the process, power, and frailty of both human and digital "memory."

Campbell has had one-person exhibitions at the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; the Exploratorium, San Francisco; and the Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan. His work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Campbell is represented by Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco and New York.

Sawa, who was born in Ishikawa, Japan, and currently lives and works in London, will exhibit a three-screen projection, titled "Going Places Sitting Down," (2005) in the Sussel Gallery. Described by Susan Edwards, executive director of The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tenn., as "a self-enclosed poetic dreamscape infused with melancholy and delight," the 8-minute, 40-second video animation of rocking horses and other characters are set into surreal domestic surroundings. In the accompanying exhibition brochure, Edwards calls Sawa "a modern-day Jonathan Swift" who takes the viewer on a journey where scale and size are negotiable and the only limitation is the imagination.

Hiraki Sawa?s "Going Places Sitting Down," 2005, is a three-channel color video projection on display at The College of Wooster Art Museum Aug. 29-Oct. 22. (Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York. Commissioned by the Hayward/Bloomberg Artists' Commission)

Sawa earned his master's degree in sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art at the University College in London and a bachelor's degree from the University of East London. His recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and the Ota Fine Arts Gallery in Tokyo. Sawa is represented by the James Cohan Gallery, New York.

"It's a pleasure to present contemporary work positioned at the intersection of art, life, and technology," said Kitty McManus Zurko, director/curator of The College of Wooster Art Museum. "Both Campbell and Sawa's art are that rare blend of gravitas leavened with both humanism and wonderment. We are privileged to be able to exhibit artists of this caliber at Wooster, and are exceedingly grateful to The Frist Center for the Visual Arts for their collaboration with Wooster on the Sawa exhibition."

The opening reception for both exhibitions will be Thursday, Sept. 7, from 6-8 p.m. There will also be an artist talk by Campbell on Tuesday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. in Room 223 of Ebert Art Center, and a Conversation in the Gallery with Kitty McManus Zurko, director and curator of The College of Wooster Art Museum, on Thursday, Oct. 19 at noon. All receptions, lectures, and exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Following the exhibitions by Campbell and Sawa, The College of Wooster Art Museum will present "convergence 2006," a juried exhibition of work by artists residing in a 60-mile radius of Wooster. Dana Self, the Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee, will serve as juror for the exhibition, which will be on display from Nov. 7 through Dec. 15.

The College of Wooster Art Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. Group and class tours are also available. Exhibitions and related events are supported, in part, by the Ohio Arts Council with state tax dollars "to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans."

For more information, call 330-263-2388 or visit.www.artmuseum.wooster.edu.