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REVIEWS GUSTAVO GODOY
GUSTAVO GODOY: WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
THE HAPPY LION, LOS ANGELES
10 MARCH – 14 APRIL
What’s the Big Idea?, 2007 (installation view). Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy the Happy Lion, Los Angeles
The fi rst solo exhibition from Los Angeles-based sculptor Gustavo seems simultaneously architectural and organic. Untitled (all works
Godoy emits a heady charm rarely encountered among the DIY 2007) is the huge centrepiece of the exhibition, a geometric and
installation crowd. His methods are deceptively precise, his materials zoomorphic formal spectacle that unfolds as the viewer moves
conspicuously quotidian and his capacity for labour-intensive in and around it. Indeed it seems to gather itself together at that
process boundless. The exhibition, while ostensibly a series of moment, heaving and breathing like a leviathan rising from the sea,
free-standing sculptures and individual works on paper, functions forcefully generating itself out of formlessness, displaying its inside-
as an installation, as the smaller sculptures are nestled inside and out body, the bright white neon sign adding to the sublime, slightly
underneath the large constructed pieces, as well as arranged in seasick ef_f ect.
clusters adjacent to them. The exhibition’s promised ‘interactivity’ This Flavin/Artschwager monster dominates the exhibition,
is in fact an extremely analogue af_f air involving literally climbing with all of the other works occupying the other half of the space.
up a series of ramps that lead above and through the entire gallery There a tumult of indistinguishable smaller works is linked by a
like a jungle gym. Godoy’s materials – primarily a hardware store ramp that wraps up and around the accumulation. The journey
shopping list of cement, wood, rubber, paint and nails – are no less up the ramp reveals from the heightened perspective several
analogue, but the obvious delight he takes in seeing everyday items sparkling moments, such as Bricks, a model of bricks cast in
repurposed is contagious, and the whimsical elements of play and concrete that, in taking one masonry form, applying an elaborate
spectacle add to the appeal of the objects themselves. process to it and generating an original object through a parallel
Thousands of individual pieces of lumber ranging in size process, deprives its subject of function but adds expressivity and
from a cigarette pack to a cross-beam are assembled with glue neatly articulates Godoy’s privileging of work over theory. Being
and nails, other elements like black rubber matting and paint are up high also gets the viewer face-to-face with the sumptuous
added here and there, and the resulting sculptures are jagged, Green Wave Drawing and Green Object Drawing, each of which
jaunty things that resemble architectural models, junk heaps and uses a range of colours, transparent pigments and drawing that
rocky clif_f s. Partly constructed in the studio but always elaborated demonstrates the same af_f ection for building, pointillist-like,
in situ, Godoy’s installations combine the strategies of prefab elaborate and ambitious structures from a cascade of tiny details.
architecture and improvisation into a site-related formal rif_f_i ng that Shana Nys Dambrot
one.linfive.lintwo.lin ARTREVIEW
p147-161 Reviews AR Jun07.indd 11 9/5/07 02:32:22
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