Abstraction Today 

Crystal Z. Campbell (University of Buffalo)

Abstraction, Pareidolia, and the Underloved

US-Based Artist and Filmmaker Crystal Z Campbell’s overarching interest resides in the underloved, or places, persons, and events that the artist intends to amplify in their work. In Campbell’s short form digitized 16mm film, REVOLVER, they explore the concept of pareidolia, or a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist. Place and displacement are central to the work––Campbell filmed in the Netherlands as well as Nicodemus, Kansas, which is the ‘longest-lasting Black homesteader’ enclave established by Exodusters fleeing the Jim Crow South after the Civil War. Speaking with a direct descendent of the original founders, Angela Bates narrates the film in a fragmented odyssey spiraling from historical anecdotes of the town, towards a psychogeographic rendering that meshes with Bates’ visions and dreams. With Rorschach-like imagery appearing and disappearing across the cinematic frame, the film gestures towards ideas of self-determination paralleling abstraction as a radical potentiality. In tandem with the film screening of REVOLVER, Campbell will share a brief artist talk referencing other uses of abstraction in their multidisciplinary practice.