Notes to Self

Anthony Campuzano deals with mortality and memory in bits and pieces.

by John Vettese

	print	email	reply

Published: Jan 14, 2009

Michael T. Regan MAN OF HIS WORDS: Campuzano's text-heavy paintings are a confluence of literary references, sketches, mementos and notes from his mother.

When Anthony Campuzano was young, he came home from school each day to bedroom clutter and notes from his mother. "Clean these up," read the scraps of paper, left atop piles of clothes, books and records. "Put these away."

Years later, those notes lent a title to the sketchbook zine he made for fellow students and professors at Tyler School of Art. Put These Away contained drawings he had been tinkering with for months. Making stapled photocopies was the only way for him to stop fussing over them.

Today, Campuzano is readying for a solo exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art — his first at that venue, fourth overall — and the show functions in very much the same way. Some pieces in "Touch Sensitive" are the product of a forward-looking artist experimenting with scale and presentation in a way previously unseen in his work. Others are based on sketchbook designs and mementos he collected over the years, ideas that have finally reached critical mass.

"I've done a bit of both," Campuzano says. "Trying to end things I need to end, and also reawakening things that I need to talk about again."

You might say that Campuzano — T.C. to his friends — speaks through his work more than most artists. He has always dealt in words, whether through frenetic, colorfully abstracted text-drawings that garnered his earliest attention, or the ghostly doorway paintings shown at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in 2007, where words were reduced to a handwritten note at the center of each piece.

The early work was saturated with cultural and historical references, touching on Campuzano's myriad interests: politics, music, psychology, literature.

Q: Who is Ayn Rand?

Elizabeth Taylor gets to keep her van Gogh.

The busier quotes were lengthy passages, written out in serpentine letters, saturated in color, repeated line by line or broken off midsentence to continue elsewhere.

Think about the ideal society. That is the first step toward creating it.

The visual density spoke to his feverish pace and claustrophobic surroundings. Campuzano spent his post-college years in tiny New York confines; his subsequent return to Philadelphia initially yielded a bigger living space but a crowded schedule, no gallery, no studio and little free time for art. Yet he kept working, and the more art he produced, the more rushed it became.

"I reached a point where I wanted to just break away," he recalls. "I had been barreling through things, and it was like you've got to jump off at some point and start something new."

At his busiest moments, however, Campuzano made the most visually still work of his career. A series of nine, 38- by 83-inch wood panels were painted to suggest doorways, some with crosshatched windows reflecting a sunny outside, some simple and stark. At the center was the same square note, rendered in different handwriting with each door.

Landlord, you lied to us. Dead man walks in basement at night.

"My father told me this story a long time ago," he explains. "He was campaigning for Lansdowne Borough Council, canvassing door-to-door, and came across a door that had that note taped to it." He laughs, imagining the scene. "It was a pretty creepy story. I kept it in my head for a long time."

Beyond their inherently spooky character, the doors were Campuzano's way of talking himself through his predicament. Echoing two of the overarching themes of his work — mortality and memory — they were also a note-to-self.

"I think I made [the paintings] not quite understanding what I was doing," Campuzano says. "In hindsight, I knew where I was headed."

Immediately afterward, he stopped making art. He spent the next few months going to museums, reading books and traveling. Old favorites were revisited; in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Ellsworth Kelly exhibit, Campuzano saw a bit of himself trying to determine his path. Work he had previously dismissed was reconsidered; Campuzano never liked Chris Burden's "macho art," but found the 2008 Rockefeller Center installation "What My Dad Gave Me" — a 65-foot skyscraper made of Erector Set parts — to be "breathtaking, so smart and so perfect."

Eventually, he emerged to re-examine one of his own works, The Storm, creating a new version that serves as the primary piece in "Touch Sensitive": the first you'll see upon arriving, the last you'll see upon leaving. (It's also the image you'll see in detail on the cover of this paper.)

Based on a bulletin board of clippings and notes, the original drawing — which showed at New York's White Columns Gallery in 2005 — had all its words blacked out into amorphous shapes except for two central quotes, the eyes of the storm. From a lesser-known Joseph Cornell collage, it expresses hope for an understanding audience:

Even before we met, I knew you were out there somewhere.

And from an old girlfriend, shoved into his pocket at a college party:

Don't ramble on, I want to get out of here. You are telling everyone your business.

Initially a conflict between openness and reticence in black and white, the newer version of The Storm is cast in blue and reveals other elements — thoughts on theology, society and art.

As with most of Campuzano's work, this one is heavily referential. Sometimes obscurely so: The Joseph Cornell quote is a minor element of a minor work known mostly to aficionados. The personal references, nobody would recognize but Campuzano himself. But this doesn't necessarily create a barrier to understanding or appreciation.

"My favorite works of art are often ruthlessly enigmatic," says Kate Kraczon, curatorial assistant at the ICA. Knowing the background can enrich your experience with the work, but there's plenty more to chew on. She suggests studying the drawings formally, without reading the text, or reading them and getting lost in the rhythm of the words. "It's here where I believe the influence of music on Anthony's life is most apparent."

Were there any doubt, the artist in person never gives the impression that his aim is alienating people not in the know. When I didn't pick up that the phrase "Paris 1919" in one piece referenced a Margaret MacMillan book, he grew so excited about explaining and recommending it, I practically expected him to reach into his bag to lend me a copy.

"His willingness to share ideas rides through every aspect of his life," says Chris Smith, bassist for local band, Espers and a friend since childhood. The two have spent most of their lives introducing each other to music, books, film and fine artists. "This is just his life. He is a conversationalist with constant intake."

Being such a consummate collector, Campuzano's ideas, sketches and mementos tend to amass over time. In the middle of the "Touch Sensitive" exhibit is his foray into three-dimensional presentation, a red steel frame housing drawings from obituary headlines.

92, Decorated vet.

57, Police sergeant.

73, Boutique owner.

They reduce the deceased simply to age and vocation, presented in the same shape as the newspaper column inches; Campuzano has hoarded the clippings for years.

Nearby is a suite of seven works titled Various Personal and National Segues, which include inset photographs of faces and photocopies of drawings, a new aesthetic the artist is toying with. One piece, Sidney Poitier Today, contains a stained sketchbook page, his rough drawings for the work. His notes indicate he wanted to inset a photo of the actor, but instead he inset his plans to inset the photo. He abandoned the work, but never stopped liking the design.

"I've always said as a visiting artist, hang on to good ideas, they don't go away," Campuzano says. "If things don't go right the first time, people give up. But if you re-examine it, change things slightly, you'll get closer to what the idea really is."

The suite's final piece contains those notes from his mother, telling him to clean up piles of clutter from two decades ago.

They might have been effective on some level. Or not.

"I don't know if T.C. really puts things away," Smith says. "He doesn't. The information is always there to come alive at any given moment."

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Campuzano will show his work at two galleries this month: "Touch Sensitive," Jan. 16-March 29, Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St., 215-898-7108, icaphila.org; and the group show "Rich Text," Jan. 22-Feb. 21, Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, 1616 Walnut St., Suite 100, 215-545-7562, fleisher-ollmangallery.com.

Second Season Arts Preview
Flash Forward
Erin Go Broadway?
Theater
Dance
Opera/Classical
Rock/Pop
Jazz
Roots
Visual Art