Jim Campbell: Thresholds of Perception

Telfair Museums presents a solo exhibition of iconic digital art by Jim Campbell (b. 1956), whose light-based works explore the limits of human perception. Holding degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from MIT, along with patents for his work in development of high-definition video, Campbell is widely known for his low-resolution moving images created by arrays of LEDS. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to the San Francisco-based artist’s works in the Southeast and will coincide with Telfair’s 2025 PULSE Art + Technology Festival.

Thresholds of Perception includes a sampling of Campbell’s low-resolution works spanning more than 20 years of his output. His captivating images engage the viewer in a primal act of looking and recognition, bringing physical materiality and humanizing elements to the digital. Works such as Color Home Movies, which incorporates found footage from anonymous home movies, are stripped down to animated pixels of light which rely on the viewer’s memory and imagination to complete the missing information. Recognition often comes from movement, for example the gait of an individual walking in Campbell’s Motion and Rest series. In one of Campbell’s major works Eroding Wave, 3,456 LED lights extend into the viewers’ space, dispersing light in three dimensional particles as silhouettes of swimmers move upward through a sculptural wave.

Jim Campbell’s art has appeared in numerous exhibitions in the US and abroad and is represented in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and others. His public art works include Day for Night (2018) a permanent moving image installation displayed across the top nine floors of Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.