CTS is proud to announce the solo presentation entitled Intimacy by artist Victoria Campillo for the -scope New York art fair. We will also have on view works by Jack Balas, The Fantastic Nobodies, Alexander Reyna, Eric Doeringer, and Fernando Montiel Klint

Victoria Campillo is a kind of mad scientist; best described as an amalgam of photographic artist, art historian, and satirist all working in chorus to create her numerous series of photographs. Working at a frenetic pace, she produces hundreds of photos while presenting dizzying arrangements that concurrently tackle themes ranging from associating specific imagery with individual artists to the often-overlooked dominance of the male artist in modern and contemporary art, especially in her series Intimacy (2001.) Aside from this, her recent series of work, including the aforementioned as well as Last Supper (2008) and Kids (2005,) is based on a repetitive motif, with a seemingly limitless prospect of variation in color, texture, and context. She develops her work around the concept of art itself, delving into the systems, power structures, and visual vocabulary inherent within the viewer’s established knowledge of the artists, as well as periods, which she depicts using a vernacular of objects and clothing.

When conceptualizing a series, Campillo begins with an intensive amount of research. She gathers materials to photograph in flea markets, shops, friends’ homes, or, in effect, anywhere she can. As a passionate collector of everyday items, such as the little pigs or toy houses featured in her photographs, Campillo is attracted to objects that exist in great quantities while holding symbolic significance. In a sense she is a collector of artists as well, eagerly seeking out new artists to enjoy and utilize in her work. Often acquiring many more objects than needed for a particular series, Campillo chooses those that best convey the desired association with a given artist. She subsequently manipulates them either physically or digitally to further capture her intentions. She then compiles and arranges the final selections in an orderly pantone that fuses minimalist decoration with deeper psychological associations that the viewer holds both with the content of the piece and with the artist named. One could say the collective knowledge of these artists is the canvas upon which she frames her content. In this way, the series are self-consciously produced for the ‘art savvy.’ Establishing the relationship between the mind and eye in categorization and identification on quite a foundational level, she presses the viewer to make a split-second association with the archetypical portrayal of a given artist’s personality and work. It begs the question: Precisely what defines these great artistic personas? Moreover, how can Campillo, as an artist herself, alter and add to their well-established diction?

Other questions that arise in the course of answering those above center around Campillo’s effectiveness in portraying these great artists. How subtle or direct ought she be? Is one’s interpretation of a photograph dependent on the affection one holds for a particular artist or the ‘general’ agreement that Campillo accurately depicts that given artist? For instance, the depictions of, say, Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrian in her series Intimacy are not very subtle yet are explicable because they reference a large, and one could say most popularly known, body of the two artists’ work (a pair of paint spattered pants, for Pollock, and a reference to grid-based painting, for Mondrian.)

On the other hand, the depiction of Edgar Degas or even Henri Matisse references a single work (Degas’ Little Dancer of Fourteen Years) or a small body of their work (the final period of