Brian Scott Campbell
Family

September 30 to October 31, 2021

Ampersand is pleased to present Family, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Brian Scott Campbell. The featured works suggest scenes and landscapes with rudimentary lines and simple shapes. “The compositions,” Campbell notes, “combine everyday iconography with the archetypal and hallucinatory. The imagery is intended to reflect the idea of memory itself—a collection of real and fictional experiences.” An element of ambiguity in the paintings is further echoed by the exhibition’s title, Family. Where are these places we see and whom is this family that is referred to? Though a semblance of human activity is implied by houses, boats, damns and bridges, the scenes are notably absent of people. What we see lacks a distinct narrative. It’s possible that you, the viewer, embody the person seeing these things. You are the eyes recording this memory. Or perhaps it’s more akin to looking at photos made by a long-lost relative, a record of specific places that add to the mythology of any given family. Even the titles of Campbell’s paintings might remind us of words found on the back of old family snapshots, playfully direct yet poetically open-ended. “The paintings merge classical motifs with a comic vernacular,” Campbell adds. “Humor is allowed to surface but is also held in check, taking a jab at the sublime, while permitting something sober and emblematic to emerge.” He emphasizes that the practice of drawing is an important gravitational point, a central language for the paintings. It accounts for his preference for flatness of texture and colors that rarely drift too far from grayscale. This focus on elemental details is alluring, welcoming a kinship with visual memories not our own yet nonetheless perfectly familiar.

Brian Scott Campbell lives and works in Denton, Texas. He received a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, in New Jersey. His paintings and drawings have been widely exhibited. Recent exhibitions include Better Weather at Marfa Invitational Projects in Marfa, Texas and Blind Mellon at Galerie SPZ in Prague. This is his first exhibition at Ampersand.

Available Works