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Making Artful Images Out of Science
January 25, 2002
By MARGARETT LOKE
Photographers have long mined the art in science. Berenice
Abbott saw abstract beauty in a magnified penicillin mold.
Catherine Wagner discovered algae mating in petri dishes
transformed into calligraphic semaphores and unsterilized
dispensing tubes resembling a work by Frank Stella. Gary
Schneider explored the universe in the irises of his eyes.
David Goldes, though, is equipped with an insider's
knowledge of science. He has an undergraduate degree in
chemistry and biology from SUNY in Buffalo and a master's
in molecular genetics from Harvard University. In 1977, six
years after Harvard, he received a Master of Fine Arts in
photography from the Visual Studies Workshop at SUNY in
Buffalo.
Paradoxically, the intersection of art and science in Mr.
Goldes's work over the last decade, on view at the Yossi
Milo Gallery in Chelsea, bears the mark of an
insider-outsider. Only someone who knows about a magnetic
stirrer, used in laboratories to mix solutions, could
create a tornadolike vortex in a glass jar filled with
water. But the image of this phenomenon, "Jar" (1998),
evokes a child's sense of wonder. Imagine: a miniature
tornado in a glass jar! Mr. Goldes highlights the
wonderment by contrasting the mysterious fuzziness of the
funnel with the ordinariness of a glass jar and drops of
water near its lid.
Similarly, only someone with a science background will know
that if you stick your thumb into the air space created by
the vortex, your thumb will be in the water but not touch
the water. Mr. Goldes did just that in "Thumb in Jar"
(1998). But ever the outsider, he undermines the
literalness of the act by showing his thumb and hand in
deep shadow, as if the vortex had released a spurt of funky
black.
Mr. Goldes, who lives in Minneapolis and is a professor at
the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, challenges the
viewer at every turn to look beyond the obvious.
The obvious here can be its own reward. There is his superb
Walker Evansesque frontal directness, his casting in an
intriguing new light mundane objects like drinking glasses,
drops of water, light bulbs, corrugated boxes, teacups,
string and pebbles. With their lush blacks, smoky grays and
crystalline whites, Mr. Goldes's gelatin silver prints also
have the luminescence of a Sudek.
What is not obvious is how Mr. Goldes does all this. He
offers no explanatory notes and only occasionally a
slightly helpful title. Like Sudek, Mr. Goldes is a sly
surrealist. His images seduce and confound.
In "Pouring" (1994), for example, shafts of light of
varying thickness seem to descend on a variety of
containers on a table - a wooden bowl, a ceramic bowl, a
metal bucket and a glass jar - and on the tabletop itself,
which is covered with drops of water. The beams are streams
of water, after all. And Mr. Goldes appears to be playing
with the interchangeability of light and water. Both are
life giving. Both can be seen and harnessed for a time but
not held in the hand.
With an almost childlike disregard for what can and cannot
be held, Mr. Goldes tries to make the intangible tangible
in his simple setups. For "Bridge" (2001), he places a
half-dozen or so lengths of string on two surfaces, one
higher than the other. The ends of the strings are in pools
of water. In the blackness between the two surfaces the
pieces of string, through which the water flows in
capillary action, have the whiteness of light.
Lengths of string also show up in "Breath From Across the
Room" (1998), this time in a large corrugated box, which
takes up almost the entire frame of the picture. Against
the box's black interior the ends of the white strings can
be seen to flutter. It is up to the viewer to imagine
whether it's the photographer's unseen breath - now made
visible in the flutter of the strings - or whether the
strings are being plucked by some other unseen hand.
Making the invisible wind visible in setups is something
the French photographer Laurent Millet does to compelling
effect in his "windtraps." While Mr. Laurent joyfully shows
the low-tech, magical interactions between man and nature,
Mr. Goldes takes a more elegant tack.
As if in homage to Martha Graham, "Bulge" (1998) shows the
wind creating a glistening rounded form out of the middle
of a long piece of dark fabric.
In "Finding North II" (1994) Mr. Goldes takes similar
delight in showing gravitational pull and the direction
north. Here, he places magnetized pins on corks floating in
water in teacups and the heads of the pins point northward.
Look carefully, though, and you'll see a wayward pin
pointing east.
This Wayne Thiebaudesque image has a counterpart in
"Tropism" (2000). In this pristine picture, with its themes
of light and life, a single light bulb is placed over a
host of pots with germinating plants. Those plants nearest
the light grow straight up, the other plants leaning at
ever more severe angles the farther away they are from the
light source.
A light bulb provides the narrative in the exhibition's
most virtuosic image. As if defying everything a child has
been warned against - electricity and water don't mix - the
switched-on light bulb in "Electricity + Water III" (1993)
leans into a glass of water. The light, hitting the bottom
of the glass, is gently reflected on the table.
Drops of water on a table, air bubbles in a glass and a
glowing light bulb have seldom looked more beautiful. This
could be a metaphor for human life, shining precariously
for a moment. Or an artist's challenging received wisdom.
Or nothing more than an exquisitely daredevil still life.
``David Goldes: The Elements'' is at Yossi Milo Gallery,
552 West 24th Street, Chelsea, (212)414-0370, through Feb.
9.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/arts/design/25LOKE.html?ex=1012962348&ei=1&en=887e015edac59e55
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