Thursday, May 14, 2015

Left To Our Own Devices

by Drew Martin
There is a great space on Varick Street a block from my work that I have somehow missed for more than a year. GEARY, which is owned and run by Dolly and Jack Geary is literally a few steps up from neighboring galleries. It is on the corner of Varick and King Street in SoHo, but this former deli space is raised several steps above the hubub without disconnecting you from it. When I noticed GEARY yesterday, I thought it was closed since the lights were not on - the artist on view wants it that way; natural light only.

The current show of David Goodman, Apparatus, is a combination of colorful, shredded paper "paintings", a number of curious wooden objects he calls devices and a backroom projection collage of colors and objects fastened to the wall.

I like most the intimacy of the projection room and the devices. Some of them are constructed to a point of teetering. As a departure from Calder's stabiles (his counterpart to mobiles), these works could be labeled unstabiles


I like how Goodman creates them as apparatuses for connecting one to art. For me they are between a shaman object (without an element of worship) and what Clarke attempts with his monoliths in 2001, which are placed on Earth and beyond to educate/advance apes, then humans to a higher level of being.