Scott Campbell, Things Get Better,

Scott Campbell, Things Get Better, (Installation View), courtesy OHWOW Los Angeles Intended to illustrate the ideas of human ingenuity and inventiveness, Things Get Better sprang from the artist’s interest and investigations into the history of tattoo culture in prisons, a fascination that may account for his work’s intensity and meticulous attention to detail, as well as his subject matter, which belies a certain makeshift ingenuity. Throughout the exhibition, Campbell explores the idea of limitation and resistance as necessary elements in the cultivation of creative energy. Observing inmates piecing together a variety of materials, including electric razors, guitar strings, toothbrushes, and spray bottles to invent bootlegged means of creating tattoo art, Campbell turned his own work towards these objects, depicting them at a large scale. Emphasizing the haphazard nature of the devices, Campbell illuminates the intense needs and steps undertaken for prisoners to literally ascribe meaning to their own experience, branding text on their skin by any means available.