Shawn Camp

The Aphotic Zone is the depth of the ocean where the sunlight can no longer reach.

For the first solo show to be held at Northern-Southern, Shawn Camp installed a set of his backlit paintings in a room painted black. Timed overhead lights cycled the room from darkness to dim light. The paintings vacillate between glowing transparency in the darkness to a tactile opacity when lit.

The room is like a plunge into an unknown ecosystem with its own circadian rhythms and scales of time. The paintings are simultaneously abstractions and aerial landscapes. The viewer floats above a new world as it turns from dawn to dusk to dawn again.

In the actual installation, the change was so gradual as to be nearly imperceptible. The video speeds up the process. The installation was accompanied by music composed by Camp. Using a Shepard Scale, the track is an auditory illusion where pitch seems to constantly rise.