BAM/PFA Unveils Recent Acquisition of Jim Campbell's Installation Work, Which Poetically Explores Technology and Memory

Berkeley, CA, May 31, 2008 - (Download a PDF version of this press release.) The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents Jim Campbell: Home Movies, an exhibition featuring a large-scale video installation from San Francisco-based artist Jim Campbell. The museum purchased Home Movies this year as part of an ongoing initiative to bolster the collection's representation of artists whose work has been presented in the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art. The exhibition presents the acquisition for the first time. Jim Campbell: Home Movies, which is curated by Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections Lucinda Barnes, opens May 31 and runs through August 3, 2008.

The exhibition, which consists of one mural-scale installation, is an iteration in a series, called Home Movies, that Campbell has been developing since 2006. BAM/PFA's installation comprises a floor-to-ceiling LED grid hanging in columns six inches from a wall. The wall flickers with the seductive interplay of light and shadow-the essence of the cinema. The columns resemble dangling filmstrips and the flickering light comes from amateur films-spanning four decades-that Campbell has salvaged and processed to their essential bytes of information. Campbell has rendered these images nearly illegible, simultaneously revealing and obscuring the private moments of anonymous others. The images resemble memory itself, as it shifts, evolves, and fades with time-but keeps its essence intact. Combining the criticality of Conceptual art and the emotive pleasure of cinema, Home Movies exposes how the digital image only approximates reality and memory but still provides an innovative perceptual experience.

Following BAM/PFA's purchase of Home Movies, Campbell generously donated his installation work Last Day in the Beginning of March, which was presented in his MATRIX exhibition Memory Array in 2003.

Born in Chicago in 1956, Jim Campbell received degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work has been exhibited extensively and is in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Metropolitan Museum; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. An additional work from the Home Movies series is featured in the groundbreaking exhibition California Video at the Getty Center in Los Angeles through June 8.

Support
Support for this exhibition has been provided by Joachim and Nancy Bechtle.

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Programs at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Packard Humanities Institute, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Henry Luce Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Columbia Foundation, The Christensen Fund, and other private foundations, corporations, government agencies, and individuals, including the BAM/PFA membership. Major endowment support has been provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and by George Gund III.

About UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) aims to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through contemporary and historical art and film, engaging audiences from the campus, Bay Area community, and beyond. BAM/PFA is one of the largest university art museums in the United States in terms of attendance, presenting fifteen art exhibitions and 450 film programs each year. The museum's collection of more than 14,000 works includes exceptional examples of mid-twentieth-century painting, including important works by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, as well as historical and contemporary Asian art, early American painting, Conceptual and contemporary international art, and California and Bay Area art. The PFA film and video collection now includes the largest group of Japanese films outside of Japan, as well as impressive holdings of Soviet silents, West Coast avant-garde cinema, seminal video art, rare animation, Central Asian productions, Eastern European cinema, and international classics.

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Admission: General admission is $8; admission for seniors, disabled persons, non-UC Berkeley students, and young adults (13 – 17) is $5; admission for BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, staff and faculty, and children under 12 is free; admission for group tours is $3 per person (to arrange a group tour, call (510) 642-5188). Admission is free on the first Thursday of each month.

Information: 24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; FAX (510) 642-4889; TDD: (510) 642-8734

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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