The Santa Fean June/July Issue
Geoffrey Gorman: Second Nature
Jane Sauer Gallery
June 17-July 12
Gorman's menagerie of otherworldly animalistic creations has the whiff of Dr. Frankenstein and Tim Burton about it (though never as outright creepy as either). These are critters who've been stitched back together with whatever's handy - sticks, paper, rubber, discarded bits of metal and twine - by someone who can't quite recall exactly what a bird, a dog, a rabbit looked like, before whatever apocalypse arrived and blew everything apart.
It's hard to say, from an artistic perspective, if all the extra bits - the amulets, the trinkets, the buttons - are too much and therefore unnecessary or not enough and somehow tentative. Or if the entire Art Brutish quality is a put-on or genuine, and what either might mean, if anything. It's as if Gorman still isn't as sure (or surehanded) about whether he's going for maximalism or minimalism with these creaturely assemblages. Which may be his point.
Devon Jackson
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