The ghosts, the commuters, the visitors, the stories...they all pass across the screen in Jim Campbell's Grand Central Station #2, a poetic meditation on movement and memory. On view in the exhibition, Watch This: Revelations in Media Art, Campbell's LED-based work features shadows that move across the floor of New York's Grand Central Station. Each dark shadow has the consistency of smoke: we never see the people, only their ghostly presence.
How many people cross the marble floors of Grand Central each day, and where are they going? Work, home, or someplace they've never been before? It's a majestic space, saved from demolition in the seventies, with painted constellations on its vaulted ceiling. And there, in the middle of a rush hour, you can always look up and see stars.
With Campbell, the action is at ground level. A discarded paper remains on the floor while countless people walk by. Poetry is not always in the stars; sometimes, as in Campbell's work, you have to look down to find it.
