As in Goodell`s other work, the sculptures (lenses) are physically in the way.
© Kathy Goodell
(c) Green: Oculus, 2000.
Glass lenses and copper,
mixed media on paper.
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Kathy Goodell: (c)
Green: Oculus |
| Twenty
glass lenses of various sizes (originally from enlargers, telescopes,
and other optic devices), meticulously and rustically encased in blackened
copper frames, singly or doubly, hang in the space from thin wires facing
a wall grid of drawings. (The arrangement is for this space. Other installations
have had, for instance, two walls of drawings, and a different hanging
of the lenses.) It is the space of the unconscious, subaqueous, where
one swims as near a coral reef. As in Goodell`s other work, the sculptures (lenses) are physically in the way. |
© Kathy Goodell (c) Green: Oculus, 2000. Glass lenses and copper, mixed media on paper. |
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One bumps into them (fulfilling Ad Reinhardt`s definition of sculpture), or tries not to, especially her earlier pieces that involve delicate layers of glass plates. But these lenses are impervious. They are worn and used. It is their realm. Like her other works, they insist on their presence, but like fish they are active parts of their environment, meant to shape, to deflect, to be seen through. In fact, we are such animals, though we pretend to be something else. Though it is not, oculus might also be octopus, an animal with highly developed eyes and brain. |
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What
is to be seen, of course, is everything in the vicinity. This includes
the trees and cars through the window, the two walls with nothing on
them, other people, and the drawings. The lenses see the way we see—randomly,
inattentively, sporadically, imperfectly— focused and unfocused—voraciously.
Most particularly they, and we, see the drawings, which represent what
is written, the beginnings of life, as an act of the artist. The paper
is clay-coated, like the clay of creation, and Goodell`s first marks
are often in olive oil, discoloring and nurturing. Fingerprints and
other marks are followed then by overlays of film on which have been
printed images of shells, architectural forms, magnetic fields, skeletons,
human body parts, earlier sculptures of Goodell`s, and other formally
exquisite structures. Some images have been further eviscerated or filled
out with computer manipulations. In several drawings, Sigmund Freud`s
diagram for his theory of the unconscious appears. What is unformed
becomes formed, and then, possibly, determined, if we only knew how
to look at these images through the lenses. Goodell does everything
she can to signify the images as potentially or mathematically three-dimensional.
The colors are, to a large degree, primary—red, yellow, and blue.
In a sense, the artist is exploring the sources of her own work, and
her own being. There is no resolution, any more than there is between
the seer and the seen; each has characteristics of the other (the drawings
are called "Amphimixis," defined as the mingling of germ cells
in sexual reproduction) but remains of its own making.
Donald Goddard © 2000 |
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The
work was exhibited from April 15 through April 27, 2000 at the Willoughby
Sharp Gallery, 558 Broome Street, New York NY 10013. Tel. 212-753-8318
Fax 212-935-5930
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