My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances (8/15/05)

Beth Campbell is a noted conceptual artist recognized for her graphic art, videos, and sculptures that explore the unknown future through amusing and often poignant personal narratives in the form of flow charts and other diagrammatic schemes that trace the many “what ifs” of her life choices. Campbell’s text-based compositions are deeply personal in disclosing events and people from the artist’s life and at the same time universal in demonstrating how a single choice and the element of chance can alter one’s future. In this lithograph, Campbell begins with an incident in 2005, when she encountered the same man (a stranger) in three random places in New York City. From this coincidental event, she compiles a series of potential future outcomes that could arise by chance or through the choices she might make in response to these encounters. At times amusing and other times touching, the print functions as a self-portrait of sorts, disclosing highly personal details of the artist’s life while revealing universal truths about the serendipity of human experience.