Opening Reception with artist on Saturday, June 6 from 3-5 p.m. CT
Virtual Artist Talk: Thursday, June 11 from 1 p.m. CT | https://usi.zoom.us/j/92919262333
Figure/Ground
Map/Terrain
Appearance/Disappearance
Field/Event
The New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art proudly presents “Ground Figures,” a solo exhibition of work by Chicago-based artist Sheldon-Till Campbell. Working in a drawing-based practice, the artist considers the scale and phenomenological experience of the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art as a site for expansion and artistic exploration. With a concentrated focus on surface as a medium through which interruptions can be explored as “events” —such as wrinkles, shadows and intentional indentations—Till-Campbell takes his practice further into a direction of durational observation in this meditative solo show.
Works on view span sculpture, painting, works on paper and artist books. Visitors to the exhibit—which activates both the main gallery and the BG Projects space—will witness the artist’s process and the resulting work, indicating Till-Campbell’s focus on, “quietness, slow shifts and accumulation cycles of growth and decay, lightness of touch, waiting for a spark of something to emerge.” Taking the gallery itself as a starting point, Till-Campbell seeks to subtly nudge the visitor toward a site-specific sense of self-discovery that meanders, as the artist observes, “toward the viewer’s awareness of their own perception in the gallery space.”
The apparent sparseness of the artist’s work results from the close attention Till-Campbell pays to the environment and to the aspects of care embedded within his process-oriented art practice, reinforcing the artist’s intent for the exhibit. “My vision for this show is for it to be a poetic meditation on this back-and-forth oscillation between sense perception and abstractly structured attempts to understand a place and time,” Till-Campbell reflects. This sentiment echoes John Berger’s reflections on awareness in his essay ‘FIELD’ (for the publication, ‘About Looking,’) in which he offers this poetic vision of how we experience events in our consciousness: “Usually, the event draws your attention to the field, and, almost instantaneously, your own awareness of the field then gives a special significance to the event.” In Till-Campbell’s dogged pursuit of the ineffable in tangible space, he evinces the impact that artists such as Byron Kim, Vija Celmins and Frederic Edwin Church have had on this practice as they open windows into observation: encountering, capturing and framing. ‘Ground Figures’ allows Till-Campbell to create a framework that eludes easy capture but that establishes the field of play for visitors ready to encounter this ineffable, inextricably linked set of works in ‘Ground Figures.’
About Sheldon Till-Campbell
Sheldon Till-Campbell (b.1993, Kansas City, MO) is a Chicago-based artist whose work is grounded in quiet, receptive practices of walking, observational drawing, and formal play. These practices slowly generate abstractions that wrestle with perception, scale, transformation, and ethical questions related to attention. Sheldon’s work has been shown in Chicago at Gallery 400, Comfort Station, and The Plan, and in many shows across the Midwest. He has been artist in residence at the John Michael Kohler Art center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and exhibited internationally at Miniprint, Oaxaca, Mexico, and Gallery 350, Malé, the Maldives. Sheldon’s performance and curatorial work explores structured conversation as a mode of critical, relational making. He has curated exhibitions for The Plan in Chicago and The Ortlip Gallery at Houghton University. Sheldon holds a BA in studio art from Wheaton College, and an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago
Lead image: Sheldon Till-Campbell, “Drift” carved and sanded birch panel, (2023) 12 x 16”
1. John Berger, About Looking (London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2015). 203.
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art at University of Southern Indiana promotes discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region. New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art is a proud outreach partner of the University of Southern Indiana as part of Historic New Harmony.
The gallery is grateful for the continued support of the Efroymson Family Fund for ensuring continuation of our exhibitions and programming, with additional funding provided for arts educational activities by funds administered from the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.
