Jim Campbell: Encoding Light

​Opening reception: Saturday, January 24, 5–7 pm

​bitforms gallery is pleased to present Encoding Light, our first solo exhibition with Jim Campbell. Campbell is uniquely recognized for his use of low-resolution moving imagery and sculptural LED installations that explore where visual abstraction gives way to recognition. The artist’s exhibition history spans more than three decades, tracing the evolution of his practice from early electronic and interactive works to large-scale LED installations. Early surveys such as Transforming Time (ASU Art Museum, 2000) and Quantizing Effects (SITE Santa Fe, 2005) established his investigation of time, memory, and low-resolution imagery. Major presentations, including Scattered Light at Madison Square Park (2010–11), Exploded Views at SFMOMA (2011–12), and Day for Night on San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower (2018) brought his work to broad public and institutional audiences. In recent years, continued solo and group exhibitions have reaffirmed Campbell’s central role in contemporary light and media art, consistently exploring the threshold between abstraction and recognition. A major component of Campbell’s practice traces how perception is constructed through visual information. Through the artist’s deliberate adjustments to resolution, slowing motion, and dispersing images across space, he foregrounds the human impulse to “fill in the gaps,” drawing on memory, experience, and expectation to make sense of what we see. Encoding Light situates Campbell’s historic works alongside a series of newly produced pieces.