Seeing Double at the Whitney Museum

After visiting Beth Campbell’s installation on the first floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art, you’ll never complain again that all dorm rooms look the same. Campbell has constructed a literal interpretation of déjà vu in Beth Campbell: Following Room. The Illinois-born artist created a nondescript corner of a sitting room in the lobby gallery of the Whitney. And then she built it again. Six times.

The effect is eerie. As you walk around the installation, you see each tiny element of the room—the rubber ball on the floor, the precise angle of the chair, the hair elastic on the bookshelf, even the wax drips on the candle—precisely echoed in the room behind or next to it. Like the enchantment you felt the first time you placed two mirrors in front of one another, the seemingly endless visual echoes in Following Room provoke mystery and delight.

Campbell’s installation is part of a series of small installations on the first floor of the Whitney in a single gallery next to the elevators. Most museum visitors walk by this small gallery, or half-heartedly peek into the room while waiting for the elevator to arrive, so the room usually houses work designed exclusively for the space by a single, lesser-known artist. Campbell’s work is a challenging installation for a bustling lobby, because what makes the installation interesting is the way it slowly unfolds as you interact with it.

The first realization upon entering the gallery is that each of the rooms is identical. One immediately assumes Campbell has constructed some kind of labyrinth of mirrors. It is not until one walks around the perimeter of the installation (the rooms are situated on a slightly raised platform) that one comes to see that the rooms are not reflections. The illusion is broken only when one sees another museum visitor walking into the gallery from across the room, or spies the guard on the other side of the installation.

One notices this hitch relatively quickly, however, because a singular room pokes out from the rectangular cluster on either side, like a lone dock. Though they are still connected to the central collection, these outposts allow one to notice the walls’ transparency much faster. This aspect of the design seems like a missed opportunity on Campbell’s part, because it abbreviates the amount of time people might spend interacting with her work.

The room itself is a strange combination of intimate and cold. A sock on the floor and a hair elastic on the shelf make it appear lived in at first. But a generic photo in a picture frame, a pleasing forest scene that looks like it came with the frame, and an austere, uncomfortable wooden chair make the tableaux feel fabricated. One doesn’t feel like a voyeur walking around the installation, because it doesn’t really feel like anyone has lived in this room. One feels rather like an explorer, trying to figure out exactly what the artist is doing with this display.

Once you become aware of the illusion, it seems obvious that without your reflection staring back at you, the walls couldn’t have been mirrors. But this lapse of logic is what is laudable about Campbell’s work. Our instinct to explore something so familiar and yet so foreign takes us outside of ourselves. For once, we think about the elements of art in relation to each other, and not in relation to ourselves.

Beth Campbell: Following Room certainly isn’t a reason to go to the Whitney, but it’s a reason to stop by if you’re window-shopping along Madison or visiting the museum to catch the Kara Walker show before it closes. If you’re in the neighborhood, take a minute to wander through the sometimes-neglected gallery. Campbell’s work may be repetitive, but it’s certainly not derivative.