David Klein Gallery, a Detroit Performs featured art venue, presents “Faulty Vision” by Detroit artist Susan Goethel Campbell. The solo exhibition explores the relationship between nature, technology and evolution as a process that requires a cycle of growth and decay.
For the exhibition, Campbell creates an installation of three-dimension printing molds made from water bottles and cellphone charging cables sourced from landfills. She sows grass into the molds and as the plant grows, its root system comes to form a living “record” of the discarded objects. The installation scales a large pillar within David Klein Gallery and is impermanent, reflecting the cyclical process of decay and growth.
Campbell’s multi-disciplinary work includes installation, video, prints and drawings as well as projects that engage communities to look at local and global environments.
Campbell explains her work considers the contemporary landscape to be an emergent system where nature, culture and the engineered environment are indistinguishable from one another. Central to her practice is the collection, documentation and observation of seasonal change and ephemera in natural and artificial environments.
Campbell’s Michigan ties include earning an MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art and teaching studio art for 15 years at the College for Creative Studies.
Beyond Detroit, her work has been seen exhibiting throughout the US including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Queens Art Museum, and Crystal Bridges Museum, among others. Plus, she’s exhibited internationally in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Slovenia.
In 2009 Campbell was one of the 18 artists selected for the inaugural Kresge Artist Fellowship.
“Faulty Vision” runs through Dec. 16 at the David Klein Gallery, located at 1520 Washington Blvd, Detroit, MI 48226.
