Exploded Views

Suspended from the ceiling, a three-dimensional matrix of spherical light bulbs hangs within the Haas Atrium of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The San Francisco–based artist Jim Campbell has programmed the LEDs that make up Exploded Views (2011) to flicker like a pixilated, cinematic screen and create recognizable but fleeting images of ghostly dancing figures, passing cars, and flying birds. Commissioned by SFMOMA, Exploded Views engages both the architecture of SFMOMA and the visitor’s experience. When seen from the ground floor, the large-scale grid of lights appears to twinkle randomly like stars in the night sky. It is only after the viewer ascends SFMOMA’s central staircase that the shadow-like images begin to come into focus.

This play between abstraction and representational imagery, uncovered by the viewer’s change in perspective, is a reoccurring theme in Campbell’s work and directly questions ideas of perception and place. Any situation, be it physical or mental, affects what and how one sees. But even when images materialize in Campbell’s work, they are often transient. In its current installation, Exploded Views is structured to be considered from only two points of view: the ground floor and the staircase balconies. As the viewer moves from one to the other, the images subsequently appear and disappear.

While exhibited in the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York, a 2010 version of Exploded Views hovered at eye level, giving viewers greater control of their spatial relationship to the piece.

Jim Campbell. Exploded Views (Improv), 2011; 2880 LEDs, custom electronics. Choreography: Alonzo King LINES Ballet. Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy of the Artist and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco and New York. Photo: Sarah Christianson.

The viewer was confronted with not only the scale of the grid but also the transition of abstract flickers of light morphing into recognizable moving images in a more immediate way. The ephemeral images sharpened and then dissolved as the viewer approached the piece, and they faded in and out of abstraction as one walked around the grid. It’s unfortunate that SFMOMA’s installation of Exploded Views is dwarfed by the vast open space of the Haas Atrium and doesn’t allow for the level of engagement seen in the previous version.

As the title suggests, Campbell’s installation attempts to visualize the notion of multiple points of view. But by providing his audience with only two, the artist limits the viewers’ perspectives.

Jim Campbell: Exploded Views is on view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through September 25, 2012.

Elizabeth Moran is an artist and writer based in San Francisco. She holds a BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and is currently pursuing an MFA in Photography and MA in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts.