Revealing / Concealing

Gearbox Gallery is pleased to present Revealing/Concealing, an exhibition by member artists Jules Campbell and Rachel Major. By juxtaposing their unique approaches to process-based abstraction, Campbell and Major’s paintings are steeped in a study of surface and the passage of time. Campbell hones her compositions by combining collage, painted layers and extensive sanding to create surfaces that reference an industrial roughness in their neutral hues. In contrast, Major’s vibrant drip paintings suggest an accumulation of color; giving the viewer thin slivers to look into and beyond, as if peering through blinds…or out to sea.

Campbell’s paintings emerge from experiences living in and navigating urban environments, from London to San Francisco, with side trips to reservoirs, wooded trails and marinas. In this recent body of work, precision counterbalances process, as she further explores the interplay between fabricated materials and structure and inevitable decay. Artificial color resonates against layered detritus honed to topographical nuance by repetitive abrasion and layering. Relying on process and a keen sense of composition, Campbell’s work is imbued with a sense of stability and presence.

A continuation of Major’s “Drip Painting” series, this new series involves both covering up and exposing, precarity and chance. The paintings consist of layers built up by dripping paint onto canvas. Whereas her last body of work was dominantly black and white, in this series Major is broadening her palette by exploring some color basics - primary, warm/cool, rainbow.

Showing concurrently in the Inner Room is Kathleen King’s installation, Lost in Things, the winning proposal from this year’s Inner Room Call for Entries. King gathers detritus from city streets, natural objects collected over years of adventuring, and items culled from her domestic environment. As in a derivé, the psychogeographic game of wandering without purpose or destination, King’s willfully marginal sets of objects gathered from the neighborhood around the gallery are arranged in meandering sequences.