Abigail Goldman - Small Improvements

About

Small Improvements is the latest collection of sculptures by Abigail Goldman. They are miniature, rendered in 1:87 scale: the figures in each work are just under 2 centimeters tall. Opening reception: Saturday, March 4th, 6 - 9pm. This exhibition will run from March 5th - March 26th and will coincide with Jason Limon's Perplexed , Beau White's Taste of Victory and Josh Juett's MM..FOOD . Goldman calls these miniature scenes “dieoramas.” While they initially appear charming, the viewer looking closely soon realizes that the diminutive figures within each dieorama are holding weapons, lying in pools of blood or standing in a kitchen, serving body parts for breakfast. What first appears to be a generic suburban family setting unfolds into a macabre tableau where miniature mayhem reigns. The dieoramas in Small Improvements are part of Goldman’s ongoing exploration of violence and our deepest selves, which are more depraved than we admit. The pull of violence is everywhere—in breathless TV news coverage of crime, in the movies and shows we consume, and in our primal selves, which are revealed in fleeting moments of daily rage: at the car that cuts us off on the highway, the boss that passes us over for promotion. Increasingly, we are angry and divided. Increasingly, we are unmoved by violence, which has become commonplace and predictable. Dieoramas are an effort to capture and contain rage, to disarm with the contrast of awful and adorable, and to invite the viewer to assess their own attraction to misery and mayhem. In this way, dieoramas become both cathartic totems and miniature monuments to the id. Goldman finds that for every one person repelled by her dieoramas, there are three who delight in them. The vast majority of us, she believes, are fundamentally dark, and driven ever darker by our modern condition. Goldman lives in Bellingham, Washington (United States), where she works as a criminal defense investigator.