Catalogue > At random

REVOLVER is an archive of pareidolia (a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist) narrated by a descendent of Exodusters. Nicodemus (Kansas, USA) was deemed a refuge for Exodusters––Black people from the southern United States who fled violence and inequities following the Civil War. Two contradicting narratives about Nicodemus are difficult to hold at once: the lure of a potential utopia while also being exiled in one’s own land. Guided by memory, history, and rumor of a fabled Black utopia, REVOLVER pairs abstraction and perceptual inquiry with psychic conjuring. Sonic transitions forge this experimental documentary, a perpetual chronicle of witnessing and wayfinding.

Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descent. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets — fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps and the optics of historical transmission –– questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks' “immortal” cell line to gentrification and cultural preservation via a 35mm film relic salvaged from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn. Campbell’s creative practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, film, writing, and installations that are often site-responsive. Campbell was the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and a a 2022 Creative Capital award. Other honors include a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, and Franklin Furnace Award. Exhibitions and screenings include MOMA, Artists Space, Bemis, SFMOMA, Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, REDCAT, MAG Rochester, SculptureCenter, MIT List Center, Block Museum, Walker Art Center, EMPAC, BAM, and DocLisboa. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar. Their latest film, REVOLVER, received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and was featured in the 2023 Berlinale Expanded Film Forum. Campbell’s artwork and films are held by MIT List Center, Duke University, MAG Rochester, Harvard Film Archive, and other collections in the U.S. and abroad. Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Campbell is a Visiting Associate Professor of Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo and lives between New York and Oklahoma. Campbell will be in residence at Washington University in St. Louis this Fall as the 2023-2024 Freund Fellow and the fellowship will conclude with a solo exhibition at St. Louis Art Museum in 2024.