Artist: Genevieve Goffman
Exhibition title: The Triumph of A Lonely Place
Curated by: Marie Ségolène C Brault
Venue: Espace Maurice, Montreal, Canada
Date: March 23rd – April 20th, 2024
Photography: William Sabourin / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Espace Maurice, Ontario
Note: Exhibition text is available here
“The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?”
William Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring (1798)
Dear friends,
I am so pleased to invite you Saturday, March 23th, from 6 to 9 pm to join us for the opening of “The Triumph of A Lonely Place”, New York artists, Genevieve Goffman’s first Canadian solo exhibition, accompanied by a text by Whitney Mallett, founder of The Whitney Review of New Writing.
Goffman’s exhibition also celebrates the launch of her first eponymous novella, co-published with Inpatient Press, which features introductory writing by Alyssa Davis, director of the Alyssa Davis gallery in New York, as well as Whitney Mallett. The new book is now available online as well as at the gallery.
The exhibition will run until April 20th, after which the gallery will be closed until the fall.
On the other side of the wall, once the flames die down, the flora grows ferociously. The realm beyond the divide has undergone a metamorphosis: the beings that now inhabit its confines elude any familiar recognition. Amidst the remnants perched atop the murky waters, where heaps of debris have accumulated, trees brazenly entwine, boldly growing within each other and above each other. Is this The Lonely Place?
In Goffman’s weltlandschaft, somewhere between distortion and premonition: a fantastical, frightening topography grows. Abstracted technological imagery is superimposed onto a rural landscape. At times it isn’t clear which parts form the fantasy – is it the pastoral or the faeryland colorscape that hovers over it ? I am of those who view glimpses of a future time with apprehension and fear. Goffman’s vision offers an alternate perspective.
It is not to say that we are in some kind of Wordsworthian dualism, where nature reigns supreme and mankind repetitively fails. Here, nature is complicit in the violence and decay. While elements of architectural experiments thrive – testaments to the passage of time, layered upon each other.
In The Lonely Place, we are confronted to the limits of our advancement, witnessing our gradual decline. The initial events are not foreign to us. But as the story progresses, the purpose of our technological prowess seems increasingly futile. In this future, protagonists hop over fences, imbibe from aged farm wine, bike back to town and shower off the poisoned air, poisoned waters. There is a normalcy to this catastrophe, a resignation to the demise. These feel like familiar grounds.
Tied to a form of romanticism, Goffman’s work proposes an unexpected element of grandeur, or renewal, an idealization not a mimetic activity. Goffman’s post-apocalyptic fantasy grows from writing to sculpture, and is vibrant with beauty. In rhyme with the romantic spirit of the 1700s, nature and the imaginary intertwine, to overcome our destruction.
In my kitchen, on the radio, I hear them talk of East Palestine, Ohio. It’s been a year now. Somewhere by the tracks flora keeps growing too. A sticker on the back of a parked SUV reads If you find a friend in Jesus, you find a friend in me. After the explosion, things also changed, but not as much as you’d expect them to.
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GENEVIEVE GOFFMAN was born in Washington D.C. and is based in New York City. She graduated from the Yale MFA in 2020. Goffman’s recent solo exhibitions include Before it all Went Wrong at Hyacinth Gallery in New York in 2022, Grind at Money Gallery, St Petersburg, RU, 2021; Here Forever at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York, NY, 2020. Goffman’s installation, The View, was exhibited in 2023 at the Museum of Applied arts in Vienna Austria.
She has also shown work with Canada Gallery, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Fragment Gallery, Lubov and Foreign and Domestic in New York, EXILE in Vienna, Austria, Patara Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia, Workroom.Daipyat in Voronezh, Russia, and Harawik in Los Angeles. Goffman has exhibited at NADA x Foreland in 2021 with Alyssa Davis Gallery and Bienvenue Art Fair (Paris) in 2021 with Lily Robert.
Goffman’s work has been featured in Nylon Magazine, Forever Magazine, Arforum, Pin Up Magazine and Spike Art Magazine.
WHITNEY MALLETT is the founding editor of The Whitney Review of New Writing and the co-editor of Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey. Her writing has been published widely including by The New York Times, Paris Review, and Interview. She’s presented spoken word and video works at institutions including MoMA PS1, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Performance Space New York.
