NO explanation needed
For his new series of works Goldman used a simple ball pen to cover up in black the models of fashion campaigns.
“The project started in New York, having too much time to “burn” on the metro, While I was sitting, speaking on the phone, holding the pen in my hand and looking down at the fashion adds in the magazine.
This is how it started and I liked it.
”sometimes a text is needed in order to fully understand what stands behind the artwork, although I personally believe in allowing the viewer to find his own interpretation of the story.
This current series of works titled “UNDERCOVER“ is one of those projects that no extra words, layers, meaning are required in order to understand the work.
The works visualize the shape of a floating mountains embryos, a conceptual idea of how we could start everything again from the beginning, a new start, a clean page, a new evolution.
The materials are unburned clay, pigments and writings on a white wooden background.
During the work process on the west border project, in which I built a raft and sailed upon it along the Israeli coast line, a new technic was developed and that was the start of these series of works.
An Israel oceanic navigation map which I had on the raft with me started to look torn and old, so when I got back to the studio I developed a new technic of turning new maps into old ones and drawing on them.
The drawings are inspired by the story of the floating mountains and their planting process in the depths of the sea.
The works are all framed in oak wood frames and an antireflective museum glass.
The image of floating mountains first emerged in Goldman's paintings as a primordial landscape, both imaginary and real, in 2013. In one of these, the image of a mountain is outlined in green and turquoise hues against a white background, whereas in another—the mountain is the bare wooden surface itself, surrounded by ocean-blue color. This reversal between image and background enables the viewer to observe the mountain as if it were either present or absent, and in so doing explore his changing mode of observation
Inspired by the visual shape of sound waves .
Pieces of wood are treated and gathered into an assemblage that mimics the shape of a specific sound or noise.
It could be the sound of the ocean waves pounding on the shore or a sound of spoken word or a tone from a loved song.
A specific moment that was capture by the noise it created, and remembered by the shape of that sound.
The works sizes varies and could be custum made
The work deals with the pollution stain that has existed for the last 20 years at Sydney Ali beach in the city of Herzliya in Israel at the foot of the abandoned Israel Military Industries base.
NIPA-5 is a chemical substance used in the process of explosives and weapons manufacture.
The works are composed of natural and manmade objects (dried prickly pear leaves, rusty metals, Israel Military Industries debris, an army issue can of hummus, a digging shovel, threads and so on) found in the abandoned Israel Military Industries base located above Sydney Ali beach in Herzliya.
The work was shown at The Artists Residence in Herzliya as part of a residency program during which I investigated the pollution stain at Sydney Ali beach and its causes, at the exhibition “Sommer Strasse” .
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The work is a computerized system that broadcasts the sound of the waves breaking against the breakwater at the Herzliya Marina directly into the museum space in real time.
One part of the installation is a microcomput- er permanently installed at the Herzliya Marina and operating independently on solar energy. The computer transmits the wave sounds directly to the second part of the installation, shown at the Herzliya Museum as part of the “Rising Star” exhibition.
During the past year, Israeli artist Jonathan Goldman has built a big raft out of recycled wood, plastic barrels, a sail made out of cloth and sailed into the open sea.This nautical-fictional journey is telling a partially documentary partially fictional story of a scientist, who plants and grows mountains or floating islands as an alternative environment for life.
The project "The West Border" started as a response to a specific Isareli Kibbutz located beside the border between Israel and Gaza. this settlement was founded in 1936 and was obligated to relocate in 1943 to the south.
Contemplating the migration of the kibbutz members south, along the Israeli coastline, ignited J Goldman’s imagination, and thus was born the idea for an aquatic, personal and political journey along the Israeli coast. It is a journey that provokes questions about the relocation of “the home”, the western sea border and the “costs” of existence in a conflict-ridden area.
During this journey pseudo scientific activities were conducted as part of Goldman’s ongoing occupation of the scientific methods expressed in his art. a “lab” for fertilizing and growing “mountain embryos” - imaginary figures whose unique growing conditions combine lights and sounds created at his artistic lab, was erected on the raft .
The mountain embryos were planted during this voyage, along the Israeli coast in the abyss of the sea, embodying the potential to cultivate landmass, creating an alternative existence or expanding on the existing one.
