Press Release

NEW ORLEANS - Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents recent paintings by Paul Campbell.  The exhibition will be on view from April 2 through April 30, 2005. An opening reception to meet the artist will be held Saturday, April 2 from 6 to 9 p.m.   The public is invited.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:30 until 5:30, Saturday 10 until 5, or by appointment.

Projection Series, Imperfect Systems (IS) Series, String Series and Ball Series:  In Campbell’s most recent Projection Series, he isolates and enlarges onto the  canvas drawings using  his signature techniques described below.  Campbell’s aim is to reinvigorate abstraction by liberating it from the artist’s hand while maintaining the spontaneity that is the hallmark of abstraction.

Imperfect Systems (IS) Series: Campbell’s paintings at first glance appear somewhat disorderly, although looking further there is an inert uniformity.   These random and expressionistic gestural paintings are partly due to the fact that his systematized chaos has everything to do with Campbell's entropic patterns and marks.

Dominique Nahas, New York art critic and independent curator states... “they seem at times to hover, skim, skid, pirouette and veer off one another. These effects do nothing less than beguile us into looking at them as living surfaces. Over the years, Campbell has developed surprisingly innovative painterly systems and sophisticated mark-making techniques that make randomness and chance collide with directness and seriality. Yet there is a measured quality in his new works that is belied by his stray marks. The new works are pared down; they have a renewed directness regarding the imperfection of systems, the overlap of one technique or device with another.  The IS works are made with an array of unusual objects. Bouncing balls sodden with paint, snap lines, motorized toys like remote control cars and robots dragging loaded paint brushes behind them (as well as finger marks) are all deployed to create serious mayhem. In all of this chaos an order or sets of ordering systems slowly emerge. The marks hint at typologies (arcs, curves, straight lines, dotted lines, abrasions, scuffs). Half the fun is in tracking down the artist's painterly actions. The other half is in getting lulled into the grace that emanates from the gossamer marks and traceries that illuminate each work. In the IS Series uncertainty and tremulousness meet bravado, directness and high-jinks fun. Benign anarchy and serious play is at the core of this artist's methodology as opposites collide with uncontrived elegance. Perhaps this is what the artist means when he refers to the ‘imperfection of systems’ as the central concern in his work.”

Paul Campbell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art, and has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Brooklyn, Toronto, Santa Fe, and Barcelona.  He has also exhibited at the Rose Art Museum, the Danforth Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among other venues. He received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2003. Paul Campbell lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.