Barry Goldberg
Menu
Studio Notes:
There are objects we encounter that can cause the most inarticulate part of the self to lurch forward in recognition. I am interested in how that experience discloses aspects of what it means to be human–aspects which might otherwise remain inaccessible to us.
I imagine a map of our body that we hold inside, something we may not be aware of until we encounter an object that stirs this deep, wordless recognition. We map these objects as well, at times despite ourselves,. The misalignment of these maps can arouse, simultaneously, impulses toward empathy and domination, fear and control, tenderness and cruelty. I am drawn to objects that refuse to resolve contradictions, where my mind chafes in its provisional efforts to make things whole.
Possibly the most humanizing aspect of art is precisely in how it fails to offer constructed certainties but rather reveals meaning in the very condition of doubt.
If you begin with an idea then the properties of one thing will seem better or worse than the properties of another in so far as your idea is concerned. When you begin without an idea then the properties do not seem better or worse, only different, and it is possible to see those differences more clearly.
Meaning which arises as a consequence is more interesting to me than meaning asserted as intention. When a form takes hold in my imagination, it is because something inside me which I did not recognize has recognized itself. I value this impulse. I do not want intention to get in the way of finding something more interesting.
The question isn’t whether you will get a desired result; the question is whether you can recognize that what has resulted is more interesting than what you desired.
In a poem, a Vermeer is not of greater value than a shoe. Each is a word. Either may be essential in obtaining a meaningful condition. In a language of physical form, every form is a particular rhythm of matter moving through space that is governed by gravity. One form may be highly allusive, another not; one may be identifiable while another has no name. I do not prefer one form to another. My desire is to be alert to the potential of their differences.
It’s better to fail in an interesting way than to succeed in a predictable one.
There was a time when if I could not relate the idea—make it clear in words—then the piece felt somehow defenseless. But I began to feel that the more defensible the piece was as words, the less interesting it was as art. And so I began working in a way which let go of this kind of idea as a point of departure.
The thing about the creative act is the vanishingly thin line between something and nothing. For me, it has always been this way.
