Material Dialogues

In Material Dialogues the works of Jules Campbell and Danny Rosales converge in a conversation around structure, surface, and the materiality of the urban environment. 

Jules Campbell’s mixed-media panels emerge from direct observation of the terrain around her West Oakland studio, a neighborhood marked by cycles of industrial activity, neglect, and renewal. Her works are not representations but tactile documents: layered, scraped, abraded, and embedded with texture. Grit, muted pigments, and gestural marks combine to evoke concrete walls, scorched pavement, and traces of graffiti long worn away. These surfaces speak of history not through narrative, but through material—each mark and texture holding the residue of time, use, and erosion. Campbell’s work positions the city as archive, where every surface has a story to tell.

In contrast, Danny Rosales approaches his sculptural practice from the perspective of balance, immediacy, and spatial relationship. Using steel, concrete, and glass, Rosales fabricates intricate forms that engage the language of architecture and industrial design while resisting the rigidity of either. His constructions are dynamic—full of lines that intersect, planes that oppose, and tensions that seem just on the verge of collapse or flight. There is a precision to his compositions, but also a freedom: rods bend into gesture, concrete slumps with organic imperfection, and glass hovers delicately within engineered frames. His work lives in the present, responding to material properties and spatial logic. It asks: how do forms hold together? Where do we find the balance between stability and uncertainty?

While their visual languages differ, both artists treat materials as agents—active, expressive, and responsive. Campbell’s panels pull us into surfaces worn by time, drawing attention to the quiet weight of place. Rosales’s sculptures stretch outward, creating a dialogue of form and force in real time. One looks at what endures; the other at what emerges. Together, they offer a compelling meditation on the physical, social, and spatial dynamics of the urban environment—a space where memory and movement, structure and erosion, coexist in constant negotiation.