Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Shadow Work, a solo exhibition by Abigail Goldman. The artist returns for her third solo show with the gallery featuring a new series of wickedly clever miniature dioramas resembling everyday sceneries of homes, storefronts and city streets. These seemingly innocent representations are clashed with murderous characters creating a strange, small universe where chaos reigns.
Shadow Work's collection of plastic sculptures are in 1:87 scale – part of an ongoing series of small works the artist calls ‘dieoramas’. The small tableaus feature figures under an inch tall that, at first glance, appear to be simple, suburban scenes – a bedroom, a bathroom, a bucolic backyard barbecue. On closer inspection, the ‘dieoramas’ are miniature mayhem: bodies are dismembered, blood flows, weapons are raised, forks are poised to dine on flesh. This juxtaposition – cute miniatures busy with savage and brutal cruelties – is meant to disarm the viewer with a surprise send-up of violence that has become almost banal in American culture. For many people, a jaw-clenching rage runs just under the surface, becoming an undercurrent that bubbles up through cracks and fissures in our culture, which is always more angry, more aggressive, more inured to the inhumane and vile.
The title 'Shadow Work' is taken from psychiatrist Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow self” archetype – the repressed, dark aspects of personality that, if left unexplored, becomes only “blacker and denser.” These ‘dieoramas’ represent their own kind of shadow work; a medium that mines the depths of gallows humor and provides a kind of catharsis, containing our collective rage and making it cute, laying bare our shadow selves that are always there, anxious, angry and ready to snap.
Abigail Goldman - Shadow Work
Hashimoto Contemporary San Francisco
804 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
March 5th - 26th, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5th from 1pm-7pm. Appointments are encouraged, but not required. Appointments can be booked here
Hashimoto Contemporary: www.hashimotocontemporary.com
Book Appointment: Abigail Goldman - Shadow Work - Hashimoto Contemporary SF
ABOUT THE GALLERY:
Hashimoto Contemporary has locations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Our roster consists of an eclectic blend of new contemporary artists. With monthly rotating exhibitions, our programming focuses on a range of painting, sculpture and installation-based work. You can also visit us at a variety of international art fairs and traveling exhibitions in Miami, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Abigail Goldman works as an investigator at the Public Defender in Bellingham, WA. She was born in San Francisco, CA and spent a decade after college in Las Vegas working as a newspaper reporter and then investigator for the Federal Public Defender of Nevada. Her dieoramas have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured by numerous media outlets, including the LA Times, New York Times, NPR, Atlas Obscura, Juxtapoz and Huffington Post. In March 2019, Goldman and her work were the subject of a documentary produced for Topic Magazine.
Goldman's miniature sculptures are rendered in 1:87 scale - each tiny figure is well under an inch tall. The diminutive size of the works are in contrast to the tableaus of gore and mayhem rendered within. At once adorable and offensive, Goldman's dieoramas are an exploration of violence - it's omnipresence and resulting banality, and our innate attraction to the grisly and macabre.
Chum
Corner Market
Goodbye, Granny
Mistakes Were Made
Namaste
NIMBY
Shadow Work's collection of plastic sculptures are in 1:87 scale – part of an ongoing series of small works the artist calls ‘dieoramas’. The small tableaus feature figures under an inch tall that, at first glance, appear to be simple, suburban scenes – a bedroom, a bathroom, a bucolic backyard barbecue. On closer inspection, the ‘dieoramas’ are miniature mayhem: bodies are dismembered, blood flows, weapons are raised, forks are poised to dine on flesh. This juxtaposition – cute miniatures busy with savage and brutal cruelties – is meant to disarm the viewer with a surprise send-up of violence that has become almost banal in American culture. For many people, a jaw-clenching rage runs just under the surface, becoming an undercurrent that bubbles up through cracks and fissures in our culture, which is always more angry, more aggressive, more inured to the inhumane and vile.
The title 'Shadow Work' is taken from psychiatrist Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow self” archetype – the repressed, dark aspects of personality that, if left unexplored, becomes only “blacker and denser.” These ‘dieoramas’ represent their own kind of shadow work; a medium that mines the depths of gallows humor and provides a kind of catharsis, containing our collective rage and making it cute, laying bare our shadow selves that are always there, anxious, angry and ready to snap.
Abigail Goldman - Shadow Work
Hashimoto Contemporary San Francisco
804 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
March 5th - 26th, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5th from 1pm-7pm. Appointments are encouraged, but not required. Appointments can be booked here
Hashimoto Contemporary: www.hashimotocontemporary.com
Book Appointment: Abigail Goldman - Shadow Work - Hashimoto Contemporary SF
ABOUT THE GALLERY:
Hashimoto Contemporary has locations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Our roster consists of an eclectic blend of new contemporary artists. With monthly rotating exhibitions, our programming focuses on a range of painting, sculpture and installation-based work. You can also visit us at a variety of international art fairs and traveling exhibitions in Miami, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Abigail Goldman works as an investigator at the Public Defender in Bellingham, WA. She was born in San Francisco, CA and spent a decade after college in Las Vegas working as a newspaper reporter and then investigator for the Federal Public Defender of Nevada. Her dieoramas have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured by numerous media outlets, including the LA Times, New York Times, NPR, Atlas Obscura, Juxtapoz and Huffington Post. In March 2019, Goldman and her work were the subject of a documentary produced for Topic Magazine.
Goldman's miniature sculptures are rendered in 1:87 scale - each tiny figure is well under an inch tall. The diminutive size of the works are in contrast to the tableaus of gore and mayhem rendered within. At once adorable and offensive, Goldman's dieoramas are an exploration of violence - it's omnipresence and resulting banality, and our innate attraction to the grisly and macabre.
Chum
Corner Market
Goodbye, Granny
Mistakes Were Made
Namaste
NIMBY
