Real Art Detroit: Scott Vincent Campbell and Grant Czuj at M Contemporary Art
Kim Fay has written a piece about Familiar in her new Substack newsletter Real Art Detroit. Read the piece below or click the button below to subscribe to her future posts.
Scott Vincent Campbell and Grant Czuj present works that explore the entanglement of meaning with material in their show Familiar. In that space between certainty and ambiguity, their images cock your head in a Scooby-Doo ‘huh?’ Recognizable materials are wrangled into configurations blending the known and the new.
Czuj’s suspended Administrator combines bed sheets, denim and paint into a bolt of dark, roughly hewn material with a fold running down the middle creating a pseudo diptych. Brighter strips of wrinkled fabric are thoughtfully placed on a murky and mysteriously eerie background lending a hint of composition. Cold and lonely at the top, a corner of material gives up and folds.
In stark contrast to the heft of Administrator is Campbell’s delicate Josephine. Here his fondness for semiotics presents in a half natural, half manufactured composition. Quietly resting in the corner, the roots steady the piece allowing the treated white branch to curl and twist upward as she calmly gazes out the window.
Packaging Study #1 (These Walls Have Ears) is a visually challenging piece. The lovely, glittering—shiny thing!—wallpaper strip is interrupted by a square of packaging with yellow netting spilling out, which feels if you pull it you might get a doorbell ring. (Don’t do that. You break it, you bought it) Campbell gets the viewer to consider the context of objects in a flicker of resonance toward the heavy migration to home delivery and a cultural obsession with instant gratification. Who doesn’t like to come home to a package waiting on the porch?
#L007 Left_Overs reads like a traditional abstract until you get up close. Czuj arranges and applies formerly employed materials into a mash of color and texture. The blast of yellow highlights shapes revealing a composition. The space confronts and retreats, declares and hides.
Photo: Kim Fay
Mother is at once creepy and vicious yet gently floats mid-air. The bare wire and partially hammered nails angrily protrude from the black body (womb?) while the cords drape to a tangle of emotions on the floor. With such a charged title, Campbell leaves all the associations for the viewers to align for themselves.
Question everything. Don’t take anything at face value. Get underneath and root around. Sometimes what you see is what you get. More often than not the crux of the matter is hiding in a dark corner somewhere. Turn the lights on and look because that’s where the truth is.
Scott Vincent Campbell and Grant Czuj’s Familiar is on view now through July 31st at M Contemporary Art 205 E 9 Mile, Ferndale MI.
*images are mine unless otherwise noted
